The Mongol Empire and its expansion into China, eastern Europe, and the eastern Islamicate in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries turned the geopolitical world of Eurasia upside down. Assembled by a talented chieftain named Temujin (d. 1227), who overcame and absorbed neighboring peoples until in 1206 he was acclaimed Chinggis Khan, the empire expanded enormously under his sons and successors. His claim to world rule was based on earlier imperial nomadic steppe practices, but his highly selective adaptation of his various subjects’ linguistic and administrative practices made his empire far more complex than earlier nomadic empires. Military rivalry with a neighboring people brought Chinggis Khan’s generals across the Caucasus and into Georgia in 1223, crushed the Cumans and their Kievan allies, and brought the Mongols dramatically to the attention of both eastern Europeans and the Muslim world. Chinggis was succeeded by his son Ögödei (1229–1241), whose armies returned to the western steppes in 1235 and destroyed armies of Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians, and others at Kiev in 1240 and at Liegnitz in 1241. Hungary, the Balkans, and Poland fell, and Gregory IX proclaimed a crusade against the Mongols in 1241 when again they withdrew eastward to the steppes.
The growing intensity of the conflict between Frederick II and the popes prevented the formation of any organized resistance to Mongol expansion, and for much of the central decades of the thirteenth century the Mongols shaped Western discussions of the crusade movement.
The letters and eyewitness accounts translated here represent but a fraction of the sources used by Matthew Paris and others for the fullest European chronicle accounts of the Mongols. Matthew’s and others’ impression of the Tartars was also heavily influenced by reports submitted by mendicant missionaries to the council of Lyons (1245), a letter purporting to be from the “king” of the Tartars, and correspondence from exiled prelates, monks, and friars forwarding news of the invaders and seeking spiritual and material assistance from Western ecclesiastics and secular magnates. Matthew Paris’s descriptions of the Tartars were even accompanied by his own drawings, which emphasized their bestial and savage behavior, and his at times near hysterical tone indicates the terror their advent inspired in many in Western Christendom and the Latin kingdoms in the East. His and many contemporaries’ conceptions and expectations of the Tartars were shaped by descriptions of the wondrous peoples and animals said to inhabit the Near and Far East (common in classical authors and medieval versions of the Alexander legend), including the monstrous races (identified with the biblical Gog and Magog) said to have been shut up by Alexander the Great behind the Caspian Gates. Their unleashing would initiate the harrowing of the earth in its final days prior to the advent of the Antichrist himself.
A competing and more optimistic legend was that of the Christian king Prester John, who, from the mid-twelfth century onward, was rumored to dwell to the east of Muslim-occupied territories and to desire to ally with Western Christendom in their annihilation.1 In fact, the first reports of the activities of the Mongols to reach the West came in the form of prophecies regarding the aid expected from a mysterious “King David,” which surfaced among the armies of the Fifth Crusade. They were publicized by James of Vitry and Oliver of Paderborn, among others present in the crusader camp, to Rome, England, France, and other regions in Western Christendom, and they influenced the army’s disastrous decision to proceed toward Cairo. These accounts actually mixed components of the legendary Prester John with a composite of the recent conquests of the Christian Naiman king Küchlüg and/or Chinggis Khan (who had successfully attacked the Kara-Khitai and the Khwarizmian Empire as he assembled his own Mongol Empire), and ignited Western hopes for potential alliances with a Far Eastern power against the Muslims.
However, as further news regarding the Mongols’ activities reached the West, doubts arose concerning their formerly assumed Christianity and their potential as allies against Islam. From the early thirteenth century onward, Hungary had attempted to come to terms with the Cumans on its borders by sending missions to evangelize them and by persuading some of their chiefs to swear fealty to the king of Hungary, to effectively serve as a buffer between Hungary and threats farther east. With the rise of Ögödei to power, the Mongols once again began their western advance, attacking western Asia, particularly the Volga River valley. From 1237 to 1238 a Mongol army under the general Batu attacked the Bulgars, Russians, and Cumans, forcing many to join their army, while others escaped to Hungary and joined with King Bela IV. By 1240, the Mongols had sacked Kiev, leading some Kievan princes to flee to Hungary and Poland with news of the Mongol conquests. Further attacks on Poland, Hungary, and eastern Germany in 1241 led to a growing realization that the Mongol threat must be checked, something stressed in a flood of letters from secular and religious authorities whose countries had been invaded or were threatened.
News of the Mongol people also began to trickle back via Dominican missions, including that of Friar Julian of Hungary, who traveled east toward the Mongol court as a representative of King Bela IV in 1234–1235 and 1237. The message he brought back from Batu’s envoys was an ominous one: the Mongols were intent on conquering the world and bore a letter intended for Bela IV that accused him of harboring fugitive Cumans and detaining Mongol emissaries. Bela quickly forwarded the threats to various ecclesiastical and secular authorities, as did Julian, who brought news of his mission to Rome. However, although both Frederick II and Gregory IX knew of the Tartars by 1237 and had received pleas for aid from Queen Rusudan of Georgia (1239) and the Ismaili Assassins (1238) and promises from the Jacobites and Nestorians of reunion with the Roman Catholic Church in return for protection, the papal-imperial struggle prevented the muster of any effective aid. While Thibaut IV of Champagne, Richard of Cornwall, and other French and English barons were occupied in the Holy Land during the Barons’ Crusade of 1239–1241, the Mongols invaded Poland, Bohemia, Saxony, Meissen, Moravia, and finally Hungary, defeating Bela IV’s field army in the spring of 1241 and sacking the capital city of Buda. Pleas for assistance from Bela, Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, and the mendicant orders were quickly dispersed throughout Christendom, leading Frederick II and Gregory IX to publish public manifestos in which each blamed the other for the success of the Tartar invasion and the failure to mount an effective resistance. By 1242, the Mongols had crossed the Danube and had led raids across the Austrian border; only a lack of pasturage and the death of Ögödei (which led to a succession struggle within the Mongol world) resulted in the withdrawal of the Mongols’ western armies and a brief respite for Latin Christendom.
Innocent IV called for an ecumenical council to assemble at Lyons in 1245. Its agenda included the papal-imperial struggle, the Mongols (perhaps ethnically related to a people known as “Tatars,” and called in western Europe “Tartars”), and a crusade in aid of the Holy Land. In order to gather information about the Tartars and the state of the East before and immediately after the council, Innocent IV turned to the mendicant orders used by his predecessor Gregory IX in missionary efforts and negotiations with Eastern Christians to make contact with the Mongol world. He sent out John of Plano Carpini and Lawrence of Portugal (to approach the Mongols via eastern Europe), and Ascelino of Cremona, Simon of Saint Quentin, and Andrew of Longjumeau (to approach via the Near East), equipping them with letters both missionizing and diplomatic (intended for both the Mongols and other Christian churches in the East whom Innocent hoped to reunite with the Roman church). The Mongols promptly rejected the papal letters’ invitation to convert and adopt a nonaggressive stance toward Christians. Because they believed in the universal sovereignty of the Great Khan, they instead issued ultimatums demanding the speedy submission of the pope and Christian magnates. Similar ultimatums delivered to the prince of Antioch and king of Armenia in 1244 (demanding tribute and slaves, among other harsh conditions) led the second to submit to Mongol overlordship (in part to escape Turkish domination) and the first to withhold his own forces from the Latin army protecting the Holy Land against the invading Khwarizmians.
Undeterred by the somewhat ominous reports from the early missions, Innocent IV sent out further mendicant missions to the Mongols. While engaged on his first crusade (1248; see below, Part VII), Louis IX had also been approached by Nestorian Christian emissaries from the Mongols with a letter from Eljigidei, praying for his success against the Muslims (which lacked the usual demand for personal submission), combined with an oral message stating that Eljigidei planned to besiege Baghdad the following spring in revenge for the attacks of the Khwarizmians and hoped that the Franks would attack Egypt and prevent its forces from aiding the caliph of Baghdad. The emissaries also sought to link Güyük and Eljigidei to the legend of the Christian Prester John by stressing their conversion to Christianity and by pledging to help Western Christians free Jerusalem. Louis sent a return mission with gifts and letters led by Andrew of Longjumeau, but was shocked at the reply his legation received at the court of the regent Oghul Qaimish, widow of the recently deceased Güyük. Treating Louis’s letter as an act of submission to bolster her uncertain rule, she sent the embassy back to Louis with a letter demanding Louis’s personal submission and yearly tribute. Eljigidei may have been eager to ensure that the Westerners’ crusades did not become directed toward previously Frankish territory that was currently under Mongol rulership (Louis had already sent troops to aid the prince of Antioch against the Turks, some of whom had gone into Cilician Armenia). Although further missionary (rather than diplomatic) envoys were sent out, notably one under William of Rubruck (who wrote a report to Louis IX circa 1255), the reports they carried back only worked to further undermine any lingering aura of the Prester John legend and eastern aid against the Muslims.
The prolongation of the papal-imperial struggle in the West continued to prevent any united response to the worsening situation in the Near East, where the Mongols had made gains in western Asia and Mesopotamia. The diplomatic reality which faced Western Christendom and the Latin settlements in the East was a difficult choice between allying with the various Muslim powers against the relatively unknown nature of Mongol ambitions, or chancing an alliance with the Mongols against the various powers of the Muslim world. Was a known enemy a better ally than an unknown force that potentially strove for world domination? Appointed head of armies in the Near East by his brother Möngke, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire (r. 1251–1259), Hülagü expelled the Assassins from Persia in 1256/7 and by 1258 had put an end to the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, which he captured and sacked with the aid of Eastern Christian allies, including Hetoum of Armenia and his son-in-law, Bohemond VI of Antioch. Hülagü’s execution of the Ayyubid caliph of Baghdad, Hülagü’s own devout Nestorian wife, and the fact that many of his court were Nestorian Christians, including his general Kitbuqa, may have kindled aspirations among some Christians regarding Mongol aid against the Muslims, particularly since he had promised toleration for Eastern Christians in Asia Minor and had pledged to return any holy places conquered to Christian control. However the vast majority of Latin settlers in the Near East appear to have regarded the advent of the Mongols with dread rather than hope.
Möngke’s unexpected death in 1259 led Hülagü to withdraw to Persia, leaving behind only a small army under Kitbuqa. With the splintering of the Mongol Empire, the Ilkhans of Persia became increasingly caught between the hostile rulers of the Golden Horde in the East and the Mamluks in Egypt. They soon began to court Christian powers by promising conversion to Christianity and the reinstallation of Christian rulership in Jerusalem, hoping to piggyback on a Western crusade to wrest Syria from the Mamluks. Despite the Mamluks’ rise to power in Egypt, Latin settlers concerned by the Mongol’s increasing advances in the Near East (including the formal submission of the crusader states of Antioch and Tripoli to Mongol overlordship and the Mongols’ openly stated goal of conquering Syria and Egypt) refused to ally with the Mongols against the Mamluks, leading to the defeat of Kitbuqa’s army by the Mamluks at ‘Ain Jalut in 1261.
With the accession of the powerful Mamluk Baibars (r. 1260–1277), the Mamluks soon regained control of former Ayyubid dominions in Syria and began to dislodge Latin settlers from their few remaining outposts in a bid to check the Mongol advance and secure Palestine as a Mamluk possession.2 Meanwhile, the Mamluks allied with Batu’s Muslim brother Berke, khan of the Golden Horde and open opponent of the Christian Hülagü after the disaster of ‘Ain Jalut. Caught between these two powers, Hülagü approached the West and Eastern Christians for alliances, although the Mongol invasions of eastern Europe and open designs on the Near East had led the papacy and other authorities to mistrust the Mongols, such that when Hülagü entered Syria in 1257, Pope Alexander IV urged all Latin Christians to oppose him and condemned Christian leaders who aided his advance, with the result that some crusaders arrived in the Holy Land in 1260 to defend it against the Mongols.
However, in 1263–1264, Hülagü continued overtures toward Pope Urban IV and the kings of Europe, proposing a united front against the Mamluks, as did his son Abagha (r. 1265–1282). Despite the fact that the Mongols’ weakened position made them amenable to something closer to a true alliance and led them even to hint at conversion to Christianity, their previously open claims to world domination meant that their embassies were met with skepticism, despite Baibars’s victories in Syria and Lesser Armenia. Among the plans mooted was that of uniting a Western-led crusade with a Mongol offensive in the Euphrates valley to split the Mamluk forces into two fronts, with the cession of the Holy Land to Frankish forces should it be conquered. Such a program was sketched by Abagha in letters of 1267 and 1268. Yet when Latins responded favorably to the invitation in 1269, Abagha found himself unable to spare troops to aid the crusaders, including those participating in the anti-Mamluk crusade of Prince Edward (later Edward I, king of England) of 1271–1272 (see below, Part X). Negotiations continued with Gregory X in preparation for his planned Eastern crusade, although Western interest in an alliance effectively died with the pope and his crusade in 1277.
See especially Charles Burnett and Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Attitudes Towards the Mongols in Medieval Literature: The XXII Kings of Gog and Magog from the Court of Frederick II to Jean de Mandeville,” Viator 22 (1991), 153–167; Peter Jackson, “The Crusade Against the Mongols (1241),” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42, no. 1 (1991), 1–18; Peter Jackson, “The Crisis in the Holy Land in 1260,” English Historical Review 376 (1980), 481–513; Peter Jackson, “The Mongols and Europe,” in David Abulafia, ed., New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 5, c. 1199–c. 1300 (Cambridge, 1999), 703–719; Sophia Menache, “Tartars, Jews, Saracens, and the Jewish-Mongol ‘Plot’ of 1241,” History 263 (1996), 319–342; Peter Jackson, Studies on the Mongol Empire and Early Muslim India (Farnham UK-Burlington VT, 2009); Paul Meyvaert, “An Unknown Letter of Hülagü, Il-Khan of Persia, to King Louis IX of France,” Viator 11 (1980), 245–259; D. O. Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford, 1986); Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan, eds., The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy (Leiden-Boston, 1999). On the intense and shifting devotional matrix into which the Mongols were fitted, see Gary Dickson, “The Flagellants of 1260 and the Crusades,” Journal of Medieval History 15 (1989), 227–267; and Hamilton and Beckingham, Prester John;James M. Muldoon, ed., Travellers, Intellectuals and the World Beyond Europe (Farnham UK-Burlington VT, 2010). On the role of the Mongols in Christian prophecy well into the early modern period, see Robert E. Lerner, The Powers of Prophecy: The Cedar of Lebanon Vision from the Mongol Onslaught to the Dawn of the Enlightenment (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1983). On the role of the Mongols in the formation of Christian thought concerning infidels, see James M. Muldoon, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World (Philadelphia, 1979); and F. Schmieder, “Cum hora undecima: The Incorporation of Asia into the Orbis Christianus,” in G. Armstrong and I. N. Wood, eds., Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals (Turnhout, 2000), 259–265.
Before his description of the Tartar invasions of eastern Europe in 1241, Matthew Paris also depicted various other crises that came to a head in the same year. The emperor Frederick II and his son Henry were leading armies and attacking cities in Lombardy that had refused to acknowledge his authority, including Faenza and Genoa. His son Conrad, heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem, was leading another army from Germany and adjacent lands against the Tartars with the dukes of Austria, Saxony, and Bavaria and many other prelates and magnates who had taken the cross against the Tartars. As part of the papal-imperial struggle, another army was led by Frederick’s ally Theobald of Apulia, podestà of Padua, in the march of Treviso in Italy, and another in the march of Ancona. Led by Frederick II’s marshal, to whom Count Richard of Cornwall had entrusted the lands recently conquered by him, yet another army was engaged in the Holy Land. To Matthew Paris’s mind, the Tartar terror was a threat perhaps outweighing all the others in its urgency.
DURING all this time that inhuman and brutal, outlawed, barbarous, and untameable people, the Tartars, in their rash and cruel violence, visited the northern provinces of the Christians with dreadful devastation and destruction, and struck great fear and terror into all Christendom. Already with unheard-of tyranny, they had in a great measure reduced to a waste-land the countries of Frisia, Gothland, Poland, Bohemia, and both divisions of Hungary [that is, on both sides of the Danube], slaying or putting to flight princes, prelates, citizens, and rustics. This occurrence is evidently testified by the following letter, which was sent into these parts [that is, England].
HENRY, by the grace of God, count of Lorraine, palatine of Saxony,3 to his well-beloved and always to be beloved lord and father-in-law, the illustrious duke of Brabant,4 goodwill in his service whenever he shall demand it.—Owing to our sins, the dangers foretold in the Scriptures in times of old, are now springing up and breaking out. For a cruel and countless horde of people, lawless and wild, is now invading and taking possession of the territories adjoining ours, and has now, after roving through many other countries and exterminating their inhabitants, extended their incursions as far as the Polish territory. Of these matters we have been fully informed by our own messengers as well as by the letters of our beloved cousin the king of Bohemia,5 and have been called on to prepare ourselves with all haste to proceed to his assistance and the defense of the Christians.
For we are truly and plainly informed by him that this said race of people, the Tartars, will cruelly and impetuously invade the Bohemian territory about the octaves of Easter. And if seasonable assistance is not given to the Bohemians, an unheard-of slaughter will take place. And as the house adjoining our own is already on fire, and as the neighboring country is open to devastation, while some countries are even now being ravaged, we, on behalf of the church universal, anxiously invoke and beg assistance and advice from God and our neighboring brother princes. And as delay is pregnant with danger, we beg of you, with all possible diligence, to take arms and to hasten to our aid, for the sake of our freedom as well as for that of your own, and to use strenuous endeavors to prepare a powerful force, by arousing the powerful and brave nobles with people subject to them, to hold them ready and prepared until we again send our messengers to you.
We have now, by the instrumentality of our prelates and the Preacher and Minorite brethren, called a general crusade (for it is a matter connected with Christ) to be preached, prayer and fasting to be enjoined, and our territory in general to be roused to war for the sake of Jesus Christ. To this we may add that a large horde of this detestable race of people, in conjunction with another army allied with them, is ravaging Hungary with unheard-of cruelty, to such an extent that the king is said to retain only a very small portion for himself. To sum up the matter in a few words, the church and the people in the northern countries are so oppressed and overwhelmed with so many and such great troubles and difficulties that they have never suffered so severely from any scourge since the beginning of the world. Written in the year of grace 1241, on the day when “Let Jerusalem rejoice” is chanted.
LETTERS of similar purport were also sent by the duke of Brabant to the bishop of Paris, and the archbishop of Cologne6 also wrote to the king of England. . . .7
Wherefore, to heal this severe infliction and to settle the disputes which had arisen between the pope and the emperor, fasting and prayer, with bountiful almsgiving, were enjoined on the people of the various countries, that the Lord, the mighty subduer of his enemies, who fights with few or with many, might become pacified toward his people and crush the pride of these Tartars.
This letter was but one of many appeals for aid copied by Matthew Paris for the year 1241. He follows it with a report of the conspiracy rumors circulating concerning Frederick II’s role in the Mongol invasion. Frederick II’s son Conrad took the cross against the Mongols and appealed to secular rulers to publicize the crusade in their territories by May of 1241, which appears to have led other prelates and rulers to muster contingents. However, although Conrad ordered the army to advance, its progress appears to have stalled and it achieved nothing, leading some chroniclers to blame the absence of a definitive leader, others the cooling fervor and charity of leaders and followers alike. The real reason for the lack of an effective crusade lay in the ongoing struggle between Frederick II and Gregory IX and their supporters; Conrad’s army disintegrated by the autumn of 1241, and he soon was drawn into a protracted struggle with German ecclesiastical magnates who used the papal-imperial war as an occasion for rebellion against imperial authority.
Frederick offered even less aid to Bela IV of Hungary than the beleaguered Gregory IX, despite Bela’s desperate offer to become the emperor’s vassal. Frederick’s lack of assistance led contemporaries to accuse him of engineering the Mongol invasion for his own dubious ends. Although he had not precipitated the crisis, Frederick did attempt to take advantage of it to obtain papal absolution from his excommunicate state and guarantees that his kingdom would not be invaded if he joined the anti-Mongol crusade. He also exhorted fellow monarchs to take up the anti-Mongol cause, ordered German magnates to aid him when he should come north to oppose this new threat, and urged Bela to collaborate with his son Conrad. However, the German forces had little intention of fighting in Hungary, but rather seem to have been intent upon preventing Mongol advances into their own lands. Mongol forces continued to ravage Hungary, despite Bela’s resistance with a motley force composed of various troops and members of the military orders. Hungary was saved only when Mongol forces precipitously withdrew in the spring of 1242, probably due to political crises within the Mongol Empire and a lack of fodder for their horses.
ON hearing these things, the emperor [Frederick II] wrote to the Christian princes, and especially to [his brother-in-law] the king of England [Henry III],8 as follows. . . .
We cannot be silent on a matter which concerns not only the Roman Empire, whose office it is to propagate the Gospel, but also all the kingdoms of the world that practice Christian worship and threatens general destruction to the whole of Christianity. We therefore hasten to bring it to your knowledge, although the true facts of the matter have but lately come to ours.
Some time ago a people of a barbarous race and mode of life, from what place or origin I know not, called Tartars, has lately emerged from the regions of the south, where it had long lain hid, burnt up by the sun of the torrid zone. And marching toward the northern parts, they took forcible possession of the country there, and remaining for a time, multiplied like locusts, and have now come forth, not without the premeditated judgment of God, but not, I hope, reserved to these latter times for the ruin of the whole of Christianity.
Their arrival was followed by a general slaughter, a universal desolation of kingdoms and by utter ruin to the fertile territory, which this impious horde of people roved through, sparing neither sex, age, nor rank. For they confidently hope to destroy the rest of the human race and are endeavoring to rule and lord it alone, trusting to their immense power and unlimited numbers.
Frederick II details the Mongol victory over the Cumans, the Ruthenians (including the sack of Kiev), and the unprepared Hungarians.
AT THIS very moment they are ravaging the largest and finest part of Hungary, beyond the river Danube, harassing the inhabitants with fire and sword, and threaten to involve the rest in the same destruction, as we have been informed by the venerable bishop of Vatzen, the aforementioned king of Hungary’s ambassador to our court, afterward sent to that of Rome, who, passing through our territory first, bore testimony to what he had seen. . . . We have also been fully informed of these events by letters from our beloved son Conrad, king elect of the Romans, heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem and king of Bohemia and from the dukes of Austria and Bohemia, as also by the word of mouth of messengers, who have been practically made certain of the enemy’s proximity. And we have heard all this with great perturbation of mind.
As we have been informed, and as the rumor of their proceedings, going in advance of them, declares, their innumerable army is divided into three ill-omened portions. . . . One of these has been sent through the Prussian territory and entered Poland, where . . . the whole of that country has been devastated by them. A second portion has entered the Bohemian territory, where it is brought to a stand, having been attacked by the king of that country, who has bravely met it with all the forces at his command. And the third portion of it is overrunning [that part of] Hungary adjacent to the Austrian territories.
Hence fear and trembling have arisen among us, owing to the fury of these impetuous invaders, which arouses and calls upon us to arm. Necessity . . . urges us to oppose them, and the certainty of the general ruin of the whole world, especially of Christendom, calls for hasty assistance and succor. For this race of people is wild, lawless, and ignorant of the laws of humanity. They follow and have for their lord one whom they worship and reverence with all obedience and call the god of the earth.9 The men themselves are small and of short stature in regard to height, but compact, stout, and bulky, resolute, strong, and courageous, and ready at the nod of their leader to rush into any undertaking of difficulty. They have large faces, scowling looks and utter horrible shouts, suited to their hearts. They wear raw hides of bullocks, asses, and horses, and for armor they are protected by pieces of iron stitched to them, which they have made use of till now. But now, and we cannot say it without sorrow, they are providing themselves with more suitable weapons from the spoils of the conquered Christians, that through God’s anger we might be the more basely slain with our own arms. Moreover, they are supplied with better horses, live on richer food, and adorn themselves with more handsome clothes than formerly. They are incomparable archers and carry skins artificially made in which they cross lakes and the most rapid rivers without danger. When fodder fails them, their horses are said to be satisfied with the bark and leaves of tree and the roots of herbs, which the men bring to them. And yet they always find them very swift and strong in a case of necessity.
We have, however, by some means or another, been forewarned of and foreseen all these events, and have by letters and messengers frequently requested of Your Majesty as well as other Christian princes, and earnestly advised and entreated of you, to allow unanimity, affection, and peace to flourish among those who hold supreme authority, to settle all dissensions, which frequently bring harm on the commonwealth of Christ, and to rise with alacrity and unanimously to oppose those lately emerged savages, inasmuch as weapons foreseen are less apt to wound, so that the common enemies of us all may not have cause to rejoice, in furtherance of their progress, that discord is shooting forth among the Christian princes.
O God! How much and how often have we been willing to humiliate ourselves, giving vent to every kind of good feeling, in order to prevail on the Roman pontiff to desist from giving cause of scandal throughout the world, by his enmity against us, and place the bounds of moderation upon his ill-advised violence in order that we might be able to pacify our lawful subjects and govern them in a state of peace, and not to protect those who kick against our authority, a large portion of whom are still favored and assisted by him. Thus by peaceably settling matters and by reforming our rebellious subjects, against whom we have expended a large amount of money and exhausted our strength, our power would increase and rise in greater force against the common enemy. But will is law with him, for he does not rule the deceitful discourse of his tongue. And he has refused to abstain from the manifold quarrels which he has sought against us. And he has ordered a crusade to be published against me, who am an arm and advocate of the church, which it was his duty and would have become him better to have put into practice against the tyranny of the Tartars or the Saracens invading and occupying the Holy Land. And he exults in the rebellion of our subjects, who are conspiring against our honor and fame, and as it is our most urgent business to free ourselves from enemies at home, how shall we repel these barbarians as well?
For by their spies, which they have sent out in all directions, these people, although governed without any regard to divine law, yet well-skilled in the devices of war, have discovered this public discord and have found out the unprotected and weaker parts of the country. And hearing of the animosity of kings and the clashing of kingdoms, they are inspirited and rise against us with greater eagerness. How much does exulting courage add to strength! Therefore we have turned our attention to both matters, and, with the help of God’s providence, will apply our strength and industry to avert the scandal to the church caused on one side by our enemies at home and on the other by these savages. And so we have expressly sent our beloved son Conrad and other chiefs of our empire to meet and check the attacks and violence of these barbarians with a strong force.
And we most sincerely adjure Your Majesty in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the author of our Christian faith, with the most careful solicitude and by prudent deliberation to take precautions for the protection of yourself and your kingdom, which may God keep in a state of prosperity, and to prepare as soon as possible a complete army of brave knights and soldiers and a good supply of arms. And this we beg of you by the blood of Christ shed for us and by the ties of relationship which connect us. And let them prepare themselves to fight bravely and prudently in conjunction with us, for the freedom of Christianity, so that by a union of our forces against these enemies who are now purposing to enter the boundaries of Germany, which is the door of Christendom, as it were, the victory may be gained to the honor and renown of the Lord of Hosts. And may it please Your Majesty not to pass these matters by unnoticed or to delay giving your attention to them. For if, God forbid, they invade the German territory and meet with no opposition, the rest of the world will then feel the thunder of the suddenly coming tempest, which we believe to have arisen from a divine judgment, as the world is defiled by the infection of various sins, as charity begins to grow cold in many by whom the true faith ought to be preached and upheld, and their pernicious example pollutes the world with usury and divers kinds of simony and ambition.
May it please Your Majesty, therefore, to provide for this emergency, and while these enemies of us all in common are venting their fury in the neighboring countries, do you by prudent counsels make preparations to resist them. For they have left their own country, heedless of danger to their own lives, with the intention of subduing the whole of the West and of ruining and uprooting the faith and name of Christ; God forbid its being carried into effect. And owing to the unexpected victories which they have hitherto gained by God’s permission, they have arrived at such a pitch of insanity that they consider they have already gained possession of all the kingdoms of the world and may subdue and bind the prostrate kings and princes to their own vile service as they please. But we hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, under whom as a leader and guide we have hitherto released ourselves from and triumphed over our enemies, that these also, who have burst forth from the abodes of Tartarus, may find their pride humbled, and after experiencing the strength of the West, be thrust back to their own Tartarus.
Frederick ends by calling upon all the regions of Latin Christendom for assistance.
. . . . “[MAY they] send forth their chosen ornaments preceded by the symbol of the life-giving cross, at which, not only rebellious subjects, but even opposing demons, are struck with terror and dismay. Written on our retreat, after the surrender and depopulation of Faenza, on the third day of July [1241].
Matthew Paris notes that similar letters were written to other magnates by the emperor, who warned the French king that the pope was aspiring, in his insatiable ambition and avarice, to bring all Christian kingdoms to subjection to himself.
AND a difference of opinion arose among many different people entertaining different thoughts on these matters. There were some who said that the emperor had, of his own accord, plotted this infliction of the Tartars and that by this clever letter he basely cloaked his nefarious crime, and that in his grasping ambition he was, like Lucifer or Antichrist, conspiring against the monarchy of the whole world to the utter ruin of the Christian faith.
Several months before writing this letter, Gregory IX had commissioned the preaching of the anti-imperial crusade in Hungary, authorizing the commutation of even Holy Land crusading vows to this effort. Increasingly besieged (Frederick II had intercepted many prelates and cardinals called to the general council Gregory had summoned with the intent of deposing the emperor), Gregory IX assured Bela IV and all who took the cross to defend Hungary that they would receive the same indulgences and privileges as the crusaders currently occupied in the Holy Land. Although he went so far as to permit the commutation of vows for the crusade to the Holy Land or elsewhere to the crusade against the Mongols, the demands of disparate campaigns meant that neither the papacy nor Frederick II could assure the new crusade of the manpower it needed. Gregory IX even told Bela that aid for Hungary could only come when Frederick II submitted. The papacy did help indirectly in the respect that the mendicant orders traditionally pressed into service to promote the crusades played a crucial role in recruitment for the anti-Mongol crusade. Mendicants fleeing westward from Hungary and Poland and friars local to the region appear also to have promoted the crusade, leading to an extraordinary response, both in vows to personally fight the Mongol threat and in commutations of crusade vows to donations to the cause.
On the history of southeastern Europe, see Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250 (Cambridge, 2006); Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000–c. 1300 (Cambridge-New York, 2001); James Ross Sweeney, “Hungary in the Crusades, 1169–1218,” International History Review 3 (1981), 467–481.
TO BELA [IV], illustrious king of Hungary. We have heard a voice of lamentation and weeping from on high [Jer 31:15], and, filled with bitterness with manifold sufferings, we lament, because through the judgment pronounced by heaven the Christian people are everywhere laid waste, because on one hand the sword of the faithful is directed injuriously upon the faithful and on the other, the edged weapon of the pagans fiercely rages against the followers of Christ. For the numerous clamor of the crimes of the human race ascending to the ears of the creator of all things himself, he who as if unseeing passed over such things, who like a tolerant person, waited for the correction of his people, has been forced to exercise his sword to avenge these injustices and to cleanse the abomination of [such] disgraceful acts from the eyes of his patience, and thus brought grievous vengeance upon sinners.
For this very reason, it is fitting that all whose hearts have been touched by the fear of God implore divine mercy by donning sackcloth and sprinkling [themselves] with ashes with weeping and sighing, so that he who shows himself always exceedingly ready to forgive, who is accustomed to be exalted over evil [Jl 2:3] at all times, might command the brandished sword to return to its sheath, and pouring out his wrath upon the peoples who do not acknowledge him, might deign to have mercy upon the people marked with the seal of his son.10
However, we trust that even if our God has begun to condemn us with harsh rebukes, that nonetheless he does not intend to erase from his presence those kingdoms which call upon his name. Nay, on the contrary, he takes pains to deliver sinners from eternal punishment by those very temporal punishments which he diligently applies as a gift for the correction of our kind, because even though the sons of Israel [were subjected to] the danger of death in the desert whenever he struck them, nonetheless the Lord’s wrath did not endure for very long.
Certainly, although we ought to be deeply disturbed by the oppression of all the faithful, our heart is filled with particular and a very great sorrow on account of the suffering of the kingdom of Hungary, the majority of which has been invaded and occupied by the Tartars (which we discovered through reading your letters, not without shedding many tears). For we have found in the same kingdom the signs of purer devotion to God and the Apostolic See, and we know that your ancestors of celebrated memory were and [your own] distinguished court is ever ready to fulfill the wishes of the church.
We fix our hope firmly in him, who although he permitted Sennacherib, the king of the Assyrians, free entry into the land of Israel, nonetheless [was] aroused by the contrition of Ezekiel [and] wiped out the enemy host in one night. And we exhort and urge Your Serenity more assiduously and entreat [you] in the [name of] the Lord Jesus Christ, that trusting in him, who keeps a humble people safe and humbles the haughty eye, you gird yourself vigorously and manfully, as befits your royal greatness, to the defense of the aforesaid realm and of the catholic faith (which is understood to be particularly besieged by the same Tartars). And you ought take care to show yourself more zealous and assiduous in attacking them, by those [means] you will have discerned [how best] to attend to [your kingdom] more powerfully, to the exaltation of your name and your reputation.
For we will take care to impart effectual counsel and aid to you and the aforementioned realm, whom we neither can nor ought to neglect in so great a hinge of necessity. With divine approval, we take both your person and household under the protection of the Apostolic See, and in order to advance the defense of the aforementioned realm, we grant that [same] privilege and enlarge with that indulgence which was conceded to those aiding the Holy Land in the general council. . . . Written in the same manner to the illustrious king Coloman [of Halych] and to the duke of Slavonia.11
Notified that the Mongols were potentially threatening Bohemia, Germany, and Austria as well, Gregory IX commissioned the abbot of Heiligenkreuz and the Dominican prior at Vienna to preach the crusade for the defense of these regions, enabling them to commute vows from other crusades to the war against the Mongols. In 1188, Leopold V, duke of Austria, had gifted Heiligenkreuz with a relic of the True Cross obtained from King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem. This donation, the monastery’s patronage by leading families of the region (including the dukes of Austria), and its membership in the tightly organized Cistercian order ensured that its members were soon commissioned to recruit for the crusades. The letter’s other recipients were the more recently established mendicant orders who were becoming central to crusade organization.
Aware that speedy help and organization might not be forthcoming from the emperor or the pope, churches of the regions invaded or threatened had quickly taken matters into their own hands, organizing a crusade prior to imperial or papal approval. At least two months prior to Gregory’s letters, Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, regent for Frederick II’s son Conrad IV, convened a council at Erfurt that produced a comprehensive series of decrees for a crusade against the Mongols. These included prayers, processions and fasting, provisions for compelling persons to attend crusade sermons, enumeration of privileges, and authority for friars to absolve excommunicates and commute any previous vow to a crusade vow against the Mongols. He and his suffragan bishops also appear to have quickly implemented these decrees, and although they infringed upon papal prerogatives in issuing crusade indulgences, they protected themselves by being vague as to what specific spiritual benefits were being granted. Multiple chronicles report that the preaching met with an enthusiastic response and large sums of money were collected.
See Maier, Preaching the Crusades, 38, 59–63, 84–5, 104, 172, and Maier, Crusade Propaganda, 144–51 for sermons against the Mongols.
GREGORY IX to the abbot of Heiligenkreuz, [a monastery] of the Cistercian order in the diocese of Passau. . . . [The letter begins with the first two paragraphs of No. 41 above.]
Consequently, we are deeply disturbed by the universal oppression of the faithful, although in these days a particular and powerful grief fills our heart, because, as we have learned through reading the letters of those noble men . . . [Frederick II] of Austria and . . . [Bernhard II], duke of Carinthia, not without shedding many tears, the Tartars, after invading and occupying the majority of the kingdom of Hungary, slaked their swords with the blood of all whom they could lay hands on, without regard for age or sex, [and] now endeavor to invade the kingdoms of Bohemia and Teutonia [Germany], desiring to lay waste the entire land of the Christians and destroy their faith.
Fixing our hope firmly in him, etc., as above until:12 we commission you by strictly enjoining you in the virtue of obedience, that through neighboring regions to what extent [you can] you publicize the word of the cross according to the prudence given to you by God, through [both] yourselves and others whom you know to be suited [to this task]. And you ought not to neglect to persuade catholic men with salutary admonitions, that [they ought to] consider that just as the aforementioned Tartars seek the destruction of the entire Christian people, so through attacking them the salvation of everyone is procured and that they ought to take the sign of the cross and gird themselves powerfully and manfully to the defense of the kingdoms mentioned above against the aforesaid Tartars, trusting in him who keeps a humble people safe and humbles the haughty eye.
For we to all, etc., as above, until is granted [to them].13 In fact, if [some] of those signed with the cross are bound by the chain of excommunication because they laid violent hands upon ecclesiastical persons or because of arson, provided that they make suitable satisfaction for injuries and damages suffered according to your discretion, and their transgressions are not so weighty and outrageous that on account of it they deserve to be sent to the Apostolic See,14 we grant to you full powers for applying the blessing of absolution according to the form of the church, and in addition the [power] to commute the vows of those who [plan to] depart in aid of the Holy Land or vowed another pilgrimage for the remedy of their sins to [the crusade] against the aforementioned Tartars.
. . . In the same manner . . . [to] the prior of the brothers Preacher [Dominicans] in Teutonia [Germany]. In the same manner . . . to the prior of the brothers preacher in Vienna. In the same manner to . . . the provincial minister of the brothers Minor [Franciscans] in Teutonia [Germany].
The monastery of Heiligenkreuz’s connections with local notables, including the dukes of Austria, ensured that it was the recipient of news concerning the Tartars, probably as part of appeals for its members to intercede liturgically on behalf of Christendom and to involve itself in the promotion of the anti-Mongol crusade. The tone of the entry may reflect the kind of propaganda the monastery publicized in response to Gregory IX’s commission to preach the crusade and/or the concerns of its informants.
1242 [1241]. The Cumans, that cursed and aforementioned people, crossed the borders of Hungary, and on the sacred day of Easter, entered the city of Rodna, whose inhabitants were feasting and drinking and dwelling free from care, and they killed everyone, religious and irreligious, young men and virgins, the old with the young, sparing no one. Afterward, they swarmed through the entirety of that province like locusts, thirsting after the blood of men, which they poured out like water.
In fact, those who first seized that land to dwell in, joined themselves to them and created an innumerable horde. Their king, by the name of Gutan,15 killed himself after first slaying his two queens and others who were gathered with him in his household, out of fear of the duke of Austria16 who was attacking that very house and finally seized it. On the other hand, the king of Hungary, having mustered together a numerous host of one hundred thousand men, as it was said, went to attack them in the vicinity of Pest. While they were resting in their camp, the Cumans came upon them unexpectedly at first dawn. And after first burning the camp, they then slew all the bishops, counts, men young and old, with no one resisting them, such that out of such a great multitude only a few escaped, together with the king himself.
Once they had accomplished these things, they were followed by another people who are called Tartars, arriving from the rising of the sun [that is, the East], and they destroyed many kingdoms, cities, and castles [including], of course, Russia [and] Poland with its duke Henry,17 because they were so innumerable that no one dared to oppose them. Heretics and false Christians joined them so that they might work their malice upon Christians and erase their name from the earth. This people subjected the Cumans to themselves, such that they subdued them in all respects. Consequently, from that time onward, their wickedness was multiplied upon the earth, such that they spared no one, and although they would sometimes make peace with those asking for it, they never kept it. Their king used to declare that he alone was lord upon the earth, and for that reason he would receive neither [military] assistance nor counsel nor legation unless the person in question was willing to follow his law, which was to deny the omnipotent God and slay men. He demanded this very thing from the duke of Austria via his messengers, but the latter would not consent. Part of their army entered the boundaries of Bohemia and Austria, and after killing many, they returned to their own lands. The persons responsible for all these wicked deeds were officials [comites] who killed the mother of the king because her son had removed them from their positions. There was neither people nor kingdom who did not dread the sound of their name. For when Pope Gregory [IX] comprehended this evil, stricken with sorrow, he devoted himself to aiding the holy church. Reeling, but not failing [his charge], he sent out his legates to preach and give the cross for the remission of all sins, which many received with rejoicing—kings, dukes, bishops, counts, nobles and the ignoble, the old with the young, and they prepared to wreak vengeance upon the sons of diffidence. But the lord emperor [Frederick II] forbade this to be done, with the result that the king of Hungary refused to come when summoned by him and to speak with him. Unreconciled to the emperor, the lord pope Gregory died [in this year, 1241].
1243 [1242]. The Tartars and Cumans, with no one resisting or opposing them, withdrew from Hungary with limitless spoils of gold and silver, clothing and animals, and furthermore they led away many captives of either sex to the disgrace of [all] Christians. Entering Greece, they depopulated that entire land with the exception of castles and strongly fortified towns. In fact, when the king of Constantinople, named Baldwin [II], encountered them in battle, on the first occasion he defeated them, but on the second encounter he was vanquished by them. Meanwhile a horrible and unheard of famine invaded the land of Hungary and more perished from hunger than [had been slain] before by the pagans. . . . Meanwhile the Roman church lacked a high priest and the lord emperor subjugated to himself the cities and castles of the Roman church and was either bargaining with or acting indulgently toward others who surrendered to him; for the Longobards [that is, Lombards] were not yet made subject to him.
The surviving prayers, translated below, survive untitled and undated in a late thirteenth-century manuscript. They may date to a council held at Oxford in 1241, which the Dunstable annalist claims legislated public fasting and prayers, probably in response to the Tartar invasions of eastern Europe in 1240 and 1241. Or they may have been produced in connection with the Council of Lambeth, held in 1261 in response to Alexander IV’s appeal of November 15, 1260, or to another later council entirely. The prayers are a fascinating example of how images of the Mongol threat were transmitted to the populace.
SO THAT the scourge of divine anger which was kindled for vengeance and came upon us because of our sins [might be lifted], that is to say, the savagery of the Tartars who spared no one, let us oppose [to them] appropriate remedies pleasing to God. We [now] take care to return to prayers and fasting and works of piety through which, if they are offered to the Lord in a spirit of humility and with a contrite spirit, we trust that the populace will be freed in body and mind from their enemies with the cessation of divine displeasure. On this account we are led to provide, with the approval of the present council, that in all cathedral and collegiate churches, whether secular or regular or parochial, in cities, fortified places, and towns, that on the fourth and sixth day of each week processions ought to be made with the eight penitential psalms and the litany before the greater mass, such that those who participate in the procession should proceed with bare feet and without linen undershirts. In fact, after the litany, these three prayers ought to be said, that is: “O God, to you your own,” etc.; “O Lord, your church laments,” etc.; “God to whom holy petition,” etc. Indeed, in churches outside [population centers], because of the dispersion of the populace occupied in the cultivation of the land, let processions of this sort be made whenever the parishioners gather on Sundays and feast days; and let the laypersons be exhorted that in procession they ought to say seven Lord’s Prayers with the same number of salutations of the Blessed Virgin. Certainly in the great mass, after the second “through all things,” first let the “Peace of the Lord” be said, and then these two psalms ought to be said daily, that is: “O God, [come] to [our] aid” [Ps 69:2] and “O God, [the peoples] have come [into thy inheritance]”[Ps 78:1], with the prayer which is said on Good Friday: “Omnipotent God in whose hand are all powers.”
Moreover, we command that the parish priests should preach to their parishioners the cruelty of the Tartars, that is, that their swords spare no one, that they lay waste and burn cities and villages, and leave the lands which they occupy desolate, so that stricken with fear, their devotion might be aroused. Certainly concerning the fasts we regulate them in such a manner that both the clerks and prelates and those subject to them ought to keep a fast on the fourth and sixth days of the week, abstaining from eating flesh on the fourth day. However, [priests and prelates] should also urge their parishioners that they ought to take pains to watch over themselves in a similar manner, taking precautions that they do not neglect to persuade them to make frequent confessions, and if they should find anyone in discord, they ought to give assistance and take effectual action to recall them to mutual charity and concord. Toward this [end], their parishioners ought to be exhorted with every diligence and care to give alms to the poor according to their resources . . . according to the counsel of Tobias “If you have much, give abundantly: if you have little, take care even so to bestow willingly a little” [Tb 4:9].
In addition to letters, news of the Tartars was transmitted to the West via refugees from newly Mongol-occupied territories, including dispossessed clerics and regular religious, who sought shelter in religious houses in western Europe and made their pleas for aid to various magnates. “Archbishop” Peter may have fled to the West with the former prince of Kiev, Mikhail of Chernigov, when the city was granted by its Mongol occupiers to a new prince, the grand duke Vladimir. Peter was presented as a metropolitan possessing significant authority within the Russian church, earning him entrée into the Council of Lyons (1245).
A CERTAIN archbishop from Russia named Peter, an honorable, devout, and trustworthy man as far as could be judged, was driven from his territory and his archbishopric by the Tartars, and came into the Cisalpine provinces to obtain advice and assistance and comfort in his trouble, if, by the gift of God, the Roman church and the kind favor of the princes of those parts could assist him. On his being asked about the conduct of the Tartars, as far as he had experienced, he thus replied: “I believe that they are the remains of the Midianites, who fled from before the face of Gideon to the most remote parts of the east and the north and took refuge in that place of horror and vast solitude which is called Etren.” They had twelve leaders, the chief of whom was called the Tartar Khan, and from him they derive the name of Tartars, though some say they are so called from Tarrachonta, from whom descended Chiarthan, who had three sons, the eldest named Thesir Khan, the second Churi Khan, and the third Bathatar Khan,18 who all, although they were born and brought up among the most lofty, and, as it were, impenetrable mountains, rude, lawless, and inhuman beings, and educated in caverns and dens, after expelling lions and serpents therefrom, were nevertheless aroused to the allurements of the world.
The father and sons, therefore, came forth from their solitudes, armed in their own way, and accompanied by countless hosts of warriors and laying siege to a city called Ernac, took possession of it, and seized the governor of the city, whom they immediately put to death, and his nephew Cutzeusa, who took to flight, they pursued through several provinces, ravaging the territories of all who harbored him; among others, about twenty-six years ago, they devastated a great part of Russia;19 where they became for a long time shepherds over the flocks they had carried off, and after conquering the neighboring shepherds, they either slew them or reduced them to subjection to themselves. Thus they multiplied and became more powerful, and appointing leaders among them, they aspired at higher things and reduced cities to subjection to them, after conquering the inhabitants. Thesir Khan proceeded against the Babylonians; Churi Khan against the Turks; and Bathatar Khan remained at Ernac, and sent his chiefs against Russia, Poland, Hungary, and several other kingdoms. And [these] three, with their numerous armies, are now presumptuously invading the neighboring provinces of Syria. Twenty-four years, they say, have now elapsed since the time when they first came forth from the desert of Etren.
The archbishop, when asked as to their mode of belief, replied that they believed there was one ruler of the world; and, when they sent a messenger to the Muscovites, they commenced it in these words, “God and his Son in heaven and Chiar Khan on earth.” As to their manner of living, he said, “they eat the flesh of horses, dogs, and other abominable meats, and in times of necessity, even human flesh, not raw, however, but cooked. They drink blood, water, and milk. They punish crimes severely, and fornication, theft, lying, and murder with death. They do not abominate polygamy, and each man has one or more wives. They do not admit people of other nations to familiar intercourse with them or to discuss matters of business or to their secret councils. They pitch their camp apart by themselves and if any foreigner dares to come to it, he is at once slain.” With respect to their rites and superstitions, he said, “Every morning they raise their hands toward heaven, worshipping their Creator; when they take their meals, they throw the first morsel into the air, and when about to drink, they first pour a portion of the liquor on the ground, in worship of the Creator. They say, also that they have John the Baptist for a leader, and they rejoice and observe solemnities at the time of the new moon.
“They are stronger and more nimble than we are, and better able to endure hardships, as also are their horses and flocks and herds. The women are warlike and, above all, are very skillful in the use of bows and arrows. They wear armor made of hides for their protection, which is scarcely penetrable, and they used poisoned iron weapons of offense. They have a great variety of engines, which hurl missiles with great force and straight to the mark. They take their rest in the open air and care nothing for the inclemency of the weather.
“They have already enticed numbers of all nations and sects to them, and intend to subjugate the whole world. And they say that it has been intimated to them from heaven that they are to ravage the whole world for thirty-nine years, asserting that the Divine vengeance formerly purged the world by a deluge, and now it will be purified by a general depopulation and devastation which they themselves will put into execution. They think and even say that they will have a severe struggle with the Romans, and they call all the Latins Romans. They fear the miracles wrought by the church and that the sentence of future condemnation may be passed against them. They declare that, if they can conquer them, they will at once become lords over the whole world. They pay proper respect to treaties in the cases of those who voluntarily give themselves up to them and serve them, selecting the best soldiers from among them, whom, when they are fighting, they always station in front of them. In the same way also they retain among them the various workmen. They show no mercy to those who rebel against them, reject the yoke of their domination, or oppose them in the field. They receive messengers with kindness, expedite their business, and send them back again.”
The said archbishop was finally asked as to their method of crossing rivers and seas, to which he replied that they cross rivers on horseback or on skins made for that purpose, and that in three places on the seacoast they build ships. He also said that one of the said Tartars named Kalaladin, son-in-law of Chiar Khan, who was discovered to have told a lie, was banished to Russia, his life having been spared by the Tartar chiefs out of kindness to his wife.
Although the papal-imperial struggle and the death of Gregory IX in 1241 had prevented the formation of an effective crusade against the Tartars, and there is evidence that Gregory’s successor Innocent IV was reluctant to call a crusade, further information of their attacks in Russia and eastern Europe continued to reach Europe in the form of letters and refugees. After the sack of Jerusalem by the Khwarizmians in 1244, Innocent IV summoned an ecumenical council to meet at Lyons in 1245 to deal with the issues of the papal-imperial struggle, the embattled Latin Empire of Constantinople, the mustering of aid for the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, and the Tartar threat.
In addition to the council’s resolution printed below, Innocent IV dispatched a mission to the Mongols’ Great Khan, composed of two Franciscan friars, Lawrence of Portugal and John of Plano Carpini. Upon their return, further missions were sent, including one made up of several Dominicans charged with averting hostilities against Christendom. Among these new missionaries was the Franciscan William of Rubruck (ca. 1210–ca. 1270), whose account was the first detailed and generally accurate description of central Asia.20 Although initially Innocent IV appears to have viewed the Mongols as an enemy more threatening even than Frederick II, within a few years the papal-imperial struggle eclipsed all other efforts. However, in 1247, rumors of a fresh Mongol invasion led Innocent to promise Bela IV that as soon as a Mongol attack materialized, he would commute the vows of all those who had taken the cross for other crusades to his aid. Fortunately for Bela, the invasion never materialized, but the Mongol presence in Syria from 1244 onward meant that they continued to be viewed as a potential threat to the Holy Land and any crusades being planned for that region.
DESIRING above all things that the cult of the Christian religion might be spread farther and more widely throughout the world, we are pierced with a dagger of incalculable sorrow whenever anyone opposes our ardent desire in this matter, with a hostile desire and action, such that they strive to completely wipe out that same cult from the surface of the earth with complete zeal and all their power. Certainly the impious people of the Tartars, hungering to subjugate to themselves or rather destroy the Christian populace, having already not long ago collected under themselves the forces of [various] nations, invaded Poland, Russia, Hungary, and other Christian territories. And these marauders so savaged these regions that their sword spared neither age nor sex, but with dreadful barbarity they raged against all indifferently, and laid waste [those lands] with unheard-of destruction, and with uninterrupted advance [acquired] for themselves the kingdoms of others. Unable to rest their swords in their sheaths, they forced submission [to themselves] with ceaseless pursuit.
And so in consequence they may be able to exert their savagery more fully upon even stronger Christian armies, attacking them with vigor, and thus after they have denuded the world of the faithful (which God forbid!), faith may turn aside [its face], when it weeps over what its followers have endured from the ferocity of that people.
Therefore lest the greatly to be detested purpose of the same people be able to be accomplished, but rather that it might fail and by divine intervention be brought to a contrary end, by all the Christian faithful there ought to be careful contemplation in planning and procuring with assiduous exertion, so that in this manner their progress might be checked, so that [their ability] to cross through [Christian lands] any further whenever [they wish] might be denied to them by the power of their armored arms. And for that reason, following the advice of the holy council, we admonish, beseech, and urge all of you, intently commanding that insofar as it is possible, you most carefully investigate the ways and approaches by which this people can enter into our lands, and that you take care to protect them with such ditches and walls or other devices or fortifications as seem fitting, so that the same people will be unable to obtain easy entry into your lands. But if you can, you ought first to announce their advent to the Apostolic See, so that we might direct the assistance of the faithful to you, and so that, with God as your helper, you might be able to be safe from the attempts and attacks of this people.
For toward such necessary and useful expenses which you make for that reason, we shall contribute generously, and we will cause to be contributed toward by all the Christian regions in [due] proportion, since through this a shared danger is counteracted. Nevertheless, in addition to all these things, we shall send letters similar to the present [statute] to all the Christian faithful into whose regions the aforesaid people might have entry.
In response to the appeal below or another like it, Alexander IV wrote letters reiterating the dangers of the Tartars’ ambitions in the Near East and eastern Europe (they had already invaded Hungary) and called for provincial councils to be held and attended by ecclesiastics, secular leaders, and the populace at large to address ways of countering these threats. In England, the archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the papal nuncio Walter de Rogatis, convened a provincial council in London in the spring of 1261 and sent proctors to Rome with the council’s proposals for aid. In response, Henry III wrote a letter intended for Alexander IV, which, while swearing his intention to aid the anti-Tartar efforts, protested the fact that the council had not included royal or noble representatives and had legislated many things that undermined the laws, liberties, and customs of his realm. The letter may never have been sent (in any case, the pope was dead by the time it would have reached Rome), but it suggests one of the elements that prevented the mustering of effective countermeasures to the Tartar threat in western Europe. The letter, Henry III’s proposed response to Rome, and Alexander IV’s letter (below, No. 48) all illustrate how popes and other parties responded to appeals from the East, which virtually forced Alexander IV to respond and perhaps also sparked liturgical appeals like the one above (No. 44). The letter also balances the overture of Hülagü (below, No. 49), offsetting the Il-Khan’s21 proposals for an alliance by displaying the military orders’ panic at the Mongol advance and its subjugation of other Latin princes in the region.
BROTHER Thomas Bernard, by divine grace, humble master of the poor militia of the Temple, to his dear, pious, and prudent brother Amadeus, great preceptor of the houses of the Temple in England, greetings and his sincere esteem.
Although in many preceding years we have often announced to you beforehand in our accustomed style, the dread and terrible advent of the little-known Tartars, now there is no further place for hiding their exploits under a bushel basket [cf. Mt 5:15; Lk 11:33], because those once outside presently hammer at the gates.22 We ought rather to demonstrate visibly their astounding and wondrous deeds, through which Christendom overseas is battered forcibly from without, and from within is disordered by excessive fears and anguish and is harrowed by the sword.
Hence it is that these same men are bolstered by so great and such an incredible numerousness and power and subject provinces to their rule without distinction with such great ease, that no none is able to oppose their forces. Perhaps this was permitted by the Lord, who is wont to purge his people, placed in the evil position of a pestilence of this sort, with scourges, so that perhaps they might be restored to heart, since according to the prophet David, the Lord’s judgments are an abyss to many [Ps 35:7]. But after subjugating the Persians, Medes, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Turks, Armenians, Georgians, and other infinite nations, and by means of an unexpected opportunity,23 having unexpectedly subjugated Baghdad, that great and most powerful city, they have moreover savagely devoured with the mouth of their sword the flesh of the caliph, that is the pope of the Saracens, and the lords and leaders of the same, together with their children and immeasurable households and others living in that same city.
Afterward, in addition, in the county called Rochas, they most powerfully subjugated to themselves Haman, la Chamele [Camela], Caesarea majora, and various cities, fortifications, and provinces and lands of the Old Man of the Mountain, Harran, Hassar and other fortifications from this place, and recently fiercely besieged the county of the lord of Aleppo near Ephesus. For this reason the people of Antioch, fearing lest sudden disaster fall upon them, particularly since the city of Antioch could by no means be held because of the unsuitability of its defenses, by the will and authority of the lord H., its noble prince,24 they sent illustrious messengers to the Mongols with various gifts of great value, that is, Preachers, Minorites, Jacobites, Greeks, and religious men, his bailiff and constable, so that at least by sparing their blood their leader might allow them to wretchedly exist under tribute and the servitude of subjection. Their war leader and lord Halan25 gave kind audience and assent to their petitions. It was nonetheless feared that, on the contrary, the worshippers of Christ might be allotted to others under him—may it not be so.
As a matter of fact, after the expedition of the aforesaid messengers, Halan commanded that the city of Aleppo be surrounded by his men and that it be assailed both by various kinds of machines and through mines and cats and other things necessary in such business, so that within five days they broke into the same city with violence, not without an immense slaughter of the Saracens. And on account of their great number, in one day the city’s walls were completely demolished by their army, and with their army and machines they dreadfully assaulted the castle situated in that same city.
However, the sultan of Aleppo and Damascus26 had reinforced the garrison with a hundred and fifty mounted warriors in order to resist the Mongols, and hearing of the unexpected fall of his city, terrified and conquered by fear alone, withdrew from Damascus with swift flight, and made the crossing with some men near our castle which is called Saphet [Safad], and from there directed his steps toward Gaza, not without danger.
As a matter of fact, on account of that situation others were plunged into desolation and terror. The entire populace of that same city and land, having witnessed their lord and captain fleeing with no one in pursuit, with no one terrifying them as yet or throwing them into a panic, were vanquished without combat. Abandoning their own, they took sudden and deranged flight in so great a throng that no one turned their eyes toward another: not parents to children, husbands to their wives, brother to brother, the humble to the lofty, the powerful to the powerless and conversely. Nor could anyone be found who would administer alleviation or assistance to the falling, since they believed that no place could be reached in which they could find any comfort from so great a dread and terror. And so the nobility of Damascus were left defenseless in subjugation to the Tartars.
Moreover, as public report testifies, on the advice of the king of Armenia [Hetoum I], the aforesaid prince of Antioch made an arrangement with the lord of the Tartars [Hülagü] concerning Tripoli and the rest of his land according to the form of the city and land of Antioch. And as that truthful assertion proposed, in the preparation of those present terms, there was the proposition of the prince visiting the same lord of the Tartars personally, or at least through distinguished messengers, carrying with them costly gifts. Certainly, as you know, in the regions on this side of the sea the cities of Acre and Tyre, and altogether seven of our houses and three castles—two in Antioch and one castle of the house of the Teutons in Apolitana, and in the province of Jerusalem two, and in the hospital of Saint John two, in the land of Tripoli one castle of the house of the Teutons—were fortified in order to resist the same Tartars according to the power granted to us by the Lord, and with the help of God we resolve to manfully preserve the same for the work of Christendom all the way to the very last intermission.
However, because of the Christians’ small number and impotence, we do not see how other lands and places can be held, unless they are mercifully passed over by the Lord. However much, solicitously and assiduously, we may follow up on this matter, it will manifest itself according to the means of the times and malice of the times. Moreover, we are completely ignorant of what kind of scourges, tribulations, difficulties, and pressures of what measure the eye has not seen nor the ears heard, we will be obligated to endure. And since for the sake of so great a business one does not brook delay, before the appropriate season, in a certain galley which could not, as befitted the matter, hold a host of messengers, we were led to send personally our beloved brothers—our brother Stephen to the parts of Spain, and a certain Hospitaller to the parts of France, and a third lord of the Teutons to the parts of Alemannia.27 They bore letters from ourselves and the lord legate and the community of Christians overseas, in which we inform Your Excellence more fully, and seeking more intently and imploring with humble prayers and conjuring in many ways by the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ, so that directing the eyes of piety and compassion toward the land specially consecrated by his own blood, and having heard the letters and those things set forth through the aforesaid brothers and messengers, you might be eager to give speedy and fit advice upon so great a business, to the extent that the Lord will have granted to you, understanding as a certainty, that unless from these very regions we are swiftly aided, to such a degree that we can withstand the assault and whirlwind of so great a horde, there will be indeed no middle ground. All Christendom overseas will be subjected to their rule.
To this end, Your Prudence ought to know that . . . in addition to the fortification of our castles and the city of Acre, our house, which answers in the service of greater causes, has and is shouldering such grievous burdens of expenses that it is known to remain in a condition so perilous that, unless through your precaution and that of other faithful persons it is assisted with timely and suitable aid, it will become necessary for us, resulting in no mean injury and scandal to our house, to either desist from the defense of the Holy Land altogether or to alienate some of the possessions and alms of our house in the transmarine region in no small quantity.
For such is the evil of the times in these very parts in these days (because of the same pestilence and the absence of the Genoese and other merchants from Acre) that it is not possible to obtain a loan of money at interest or through securities. On the contrary, for the sake of the aforesaid defenses it is necessary for us to shoulder expenses four times larger than usual. For hired men cannot be had unless they also receive their livelihood, and what price can equal the danger of their death?28 For is there in the world any prince who without considerable sacrifice could keep seven key castles defensible and well fortified on one and the same day against this incredible horde and shoulder the accumulation of expenses due to those things done for the defense of as great a city as Acre, which for the greater part falls upon us, a city to which all Christendom on this side of the sea recurs as to a solitary refuge? Certainly we do not believe so.29
And, O, that merchants and other lenders could be found who through the mortgaging of church ornaments, that is, crosses, chalices, thuribles, and everything else in our houses, would hand over money to us. For in this kind of emergency by no means do we endeavor to spare our own body. On the contrary, we and our honorable religious house rather stand firm in our great desire to pay the debt of nature in regard to the defense of the Christian faith. May the Lord in his mercy spare our souls: we are not anxious about temporal things. Moreover, with great entreaty of prayers we are begging the lord king of England and also the queen, that she would implore the king herself,30 that in order to relieve our house of the lack of ten thousand marks of silver, he ought to aid us mercifully through a loan made out in his name. For this reason we command you to steadfastly solicit the king as solicitously and assiduously as you are able, until you have secured this kind of favor from him, writing back to us your will on this and other matters.
Written in Acre, the fourth day of the month of March, in the year of the Lord 1261.
Alexander IV (1254–1264) issued a number of letters throughout Christendom concerning the Mongol threat. The letter translated here, however, is one of the last papal letters concerning the Mongols, although it is no less apprehensive than earlier letters. It illustrates the general papal perception of the Mongol threat. Similar papal letters on the Mongol threat were sent to Prince Edward of England and many other addressees.
See Reuven Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks: The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War, 1260–1281 (Cambridge, 1995).
BISHOP Alexander [IV], servant of the servants of God, to our venerable brothers the archbishop of Canterbury and his suffragans, and also to our beloved sons the abbots, priors, deans, provosts, archdeacons, and other prelates of the churches, to chapters and religious houses of every order in the province of Canterbury, greetings and the apostolic blessing.
The dread trumpet of the public crier calls to the ears of everyone and rouses those whom torpor of soul has not stupefied to vigilance of attentiveness and growing stronger by the credibility of confirming events, with so true a sound it announces beforehand wars leading to general disaster, the scourge of heavenly wrath, of inhuman Tartars bursting forth as if from hidden places of hell, who pull down cities and destroy the face of the earth, so that now it should not be necessary for the ears of the Christian people to be roused to learn of these things by the recital of more certain [facts], as if [matters] were still uncertain, but [rather] that they be admonished to prudently resist this openly violent and hastily approaching danger.
For in fact these Tartars, saying that the God of heaven has handed over the entire earth to be occupied by them (which they understood not at all), already have occupied all the eastern regions and have trodden down its inhabitants. Already the hardness of the Saracens which occasioned and produced the wars of many periods, [has been] shattered by the utmost punishment, the desolation of exile. Already the foremost of their cities—Baghdad, Damascus, and Aleppo—have been hostilely seized and destroyed by the same [Tartars] together with many other renowned regions and moreover, the caliph, the head of their infidelity, and a very large host of his people, as it is said, were slain after their surrender had been accepted. And they [the Mongols] reached the boundaries of the kingdom of Jerusalem and attacked by invading it, subjecting the Christian region of Armenia and the illustrious cities of the Christians, Antioch and Tripoli, to their name. Ah the shame of it! And since from the northern region through Hungary and Poland, which border upon the Roman Empire [and] where already—Oh, the mortification!—they have already shed not a little of Christian blood, they may yet attempt a hostile entrance into Europe with a mighty orgy of massacre upon the inhabitants of those regions. For they plan to annihilate the mighty heads of Christendom, and after overthrowing the thrones of kings and seats of powerful rulers, secure the sole rulership of the entire globe. It is for that reason preferable to think of opportune remedies in the face of such a near and pressing danger, than to demand a more swift or more grave enunciation of them.
For this very reason all inactivity arising from unconcern or cowardly sluggishness [ought to be banished, since] it prepares and sets up the improvident for the risk of destruction. And it is fitting that in particular those who lead be roused to attentiveness with the most urgent of goads, lest a sudden defeat at their hands fall upon stupefied men paralyzed through negligence, because the ruin at first menacing evil men occasionally is overcome through diligence of care should they be vigilant. [Yet this did not happen in the case of] the aforementioned Saracens and innumerable other peoples, who deprived of the counsel of prudence and unworthy of heavenly aid, were assailed by the oppression of the Tartars, as is known to have happened. For it is well known that the bane of pestilence and a more ruinous plague infects those who are secure and at peace. And he tests God who when danger menaces neglects to counteract it with remedies provided by human foresight in presumptuous confidence upon heavenly assistance.
For this reason, considering that the scourge of divine ire rages against the sins of the human race through the hand of the same Tartars, nonetheless toward the faithful he demonstrates great evidence of devotion. For he does not wish that [danger] to menace us unforeseen, but that by the antidote of divine propitiation and the counsel of prudence that which was long before foreseen might be successfully prevented. Trusting in the mercy of the compassionate God, that if he should visit the rod upon their iniquities and the blows of discipline upon their sins, in the end he will not hide his mercy from them, we deliberated with [our] brothers in what way our special pastoral office demands from us (to whom it is granted, albeit undeservedly to command) to order useful [and] salutary remedies against this same scourge.
Certainly it seems that in the face of such a hinge of universal necessity a general council ought to be convoked not only of ecclesiastics (for it is evident that the men of the church alone cannot suffice) but also of secular princes and of peoples of the faith, so that general deliberation may be held concerning the universal danger to everyone, with the attentive observations of each individual for the provision of fitting remedies. For in this situation, most common to everyone and most peculiar to each individual, no one takes the lead. Although it should particularly concern the very powerful, who before all else are accustomed to organizing the response, what should happen if they are killed at the beginning of whatever kind of desolation, so that the others might be more easily, like leaderless men, taken captive and scattered to their harm?
Anything concerning the whole touches each one in particular, binding together the ruin and position, death and life of each individual. For among those same Tartars no one was protected by patronage, condition of rank or weakness of sex or compassion for age or respect for rank. They undertook the ruin and destruction not of certain groups but of everyone. They observe no pact or pledge of faith, which in fact the infidels cannot make.31 For this very reason when they pretend that they have the intention of private affection for Christians, this snare of theirs ought rather to be guarded against by Christians as a cunning ruse, cloaked under the cover of this kind of pretense, by which they will endeavor to trip them up with more subtle deceits, which they trust in and devise for contending against stronger peoples.
In fact, because these Tartars are persisting vigilantly in their wicked plans, this kind of matter does not bear the cost of long delay. Because of injuries to persons and losses to properties it would be of no value for us to assemble the whole world with us in a council after a long stretch of time. And so, according to the necessity by which the general body is burdened, by the advice of the aforementioned brothers, we were led to recommend this present expedient: that in every single kingdom and province the faithful ought to be exhorted to consider those particular causes, on account of which the Saracens and other peoples are clearly provoking divine judgment against themselves, since the displeasure of our God has inflicted them with the plague of the Tartar desolation, and their faithlessness is now subject to a faithless nation. In addition to the failure of human foresight, they were buried by their dilatoriness and inactivity and turned asunder from each other by various quarrels, and so they deprived themselves of the timely remedies of defense. As far as possible, after absorbing a warning for themselves from the dangers facing foreigners, the faithful ought to preserve themselves from the evils threatening them by applying contrary remedies.
We therefore admonish, urge, and invite the whole of you, commanding you through apostolic writings, [and] strictly enjoining that according to the virtue of obedience to the extent that you are able, that you, brother archbishop, through yourself and through those to whom you entrust this matter, convoke to a provincial council, and, if it should prove necessary, bind through ecclesiastical censure, the prelates of your province, both regulars and seculars and equally the exempt. . . . [And we urge] you to swiftly and suitably arrange in one universal provision how through the word of exhortation the people subject to you might be effectually led to reconcile themselves to God and God to the same through fitting fruits of penance, and indeed to reform in themselves the fellowship of mutual peace. Let the wrath of divine punishment, inflamed by the iniquity of those sinning, be appeased by the devout humility of those doing penance and crying out to God in heaven. For no enemy opposition will harm those who do not allow themselves to be mastered by any depravity of vices or dissension among themselves.
Then you ought to take care to premeditate with well-considered weighing of deliberation by what means and by what remedies and subsidies both ecclesiastical and secular the same Tartars may be resisted, both in the Holy Land which they are assaulting and invading, and in the kingdom of Hungary and in the land of Poland. For in these and other [regions], they endeavor to gain entrance by force in order to occupy other kingdoms of the Christians, and the forces of the Christian people ought to unite together as one. For the resources of one king or realm are not sufficient for containing the incursions of a horde so great and so indomitable.32 We ought also to ascertain what penalties and what spiritual censures and compulsions may be necessary to restrain Christians of whatever exalted rank or condition from entering into alliances with the same Tartars, lest they make void the faith which they ought to keep with God and their neighbors of the catholic religion and attempt anything to the injury and damage of the Christian name and people.
Moreover, they ought to be held to aid these regions against the same Tartars either in person or through other measures or other men. Indeed as war leaders or captains they ought to take command of the army of the faithful in the battle of the Lord that will be advancing against the satellites of the infidels. In particular ecclesiastics and the Christian people ought to be led to make gifts and other things suited to support and assistance on behalf of those accomplishing these things.
You ought no less to ponder—according to the prudence given to you by God and with opportune foresight—about the remaining intercessions and deliberate upon matters pertaining to so great and well-known a business, keeping God and the collective danger before your eyes. And you ought to engage in careful deliberation on all these things until the next octaves of the feast of the apostles Peter and Paul to come (because having considered the urgency of necessity, assuredly that space of time ought to seem brief to no one). Afterward, you ought to send to the apostolic seat some of your number or otherwise your messengers. These men ought to be suitable and discreet and sufficiently instructed and possessed of a full mandate from you pertaining to the accomplishing of all the matters mentioned above (which you would have the power to accomplish if personally present), through whom your wishes and counsel regarding the aforementioned matters might be made known to us. And once their advice has been communicated to us, the aforesaid apostolic seat may with provident deliberation decree, arrange, and order those things which the service of the public welfare of Christendom demands in such an arduous affair.
For we resolutely trust in the Lord and in the might of his power that if all these measures are prepared together with fitting order, the Tartars might find the Christians readied to withstand the Tartars’ savagery and fortified beforehand with the assistance of divine favor and the stratagems of human foresight. We hope that with these there might be experienced among them the dread of a host of vicious events, fictitious wonders, the deceits of trickery and schism of discord, that those unprovided-for means through which they have thus far prevailed over foreign peoples might benefit them little. And in fact that rather with God’s favor they [the Christians] will demonstrate to them how much the name of Christ is worth to those faithfully and worthily calling upon it in the war of the faithful against the perfidious. If, however, you, brother archbishop, should be absent or neglectful (may this not be so), you ought to see to it all these things are carried out by your son, the chapter of Canterbury, supported by apostolic authority.
The annalist notes that Pope Alexander died this same year.
The letter translated below appears to have been one of many carried by an embassy sent by Hülagü, the il-khan of Persia, to Louis IX, Urban IV (1261–1264), and other Western rulers in 1262. A later legation sent by Hülagü’s son and successor Abagha to the Second Council of Lyons (1274) mentioned this earlier attempt to make an alliance but claimed that its messengers had been intercepted by Manfred, the illegitimate son of Frederick II. However, it appears that at least one messenger, John the Hungarian, did reach Urban IV with an official letter and accompanying oral messages. A copy of the letter intended for Louis IX, preserved by a fourteenth-century scribe, is translated below. Although we cannot say with absolute certainty that it reached its intended audience, some scholars believe that the Mongol embassy did reach Louis in Paris.
Written not long after the battle of ‘Ain Jalut, the letter uses a curious blend of blandishment and intimidation to urge Louis to lend naval assistance and block the Mamluks’ retreat from a planned Mongol land offensive. The editor of the letter convincingly suggests that it was composed in Latin (rather than being translated into Latin from the Mongolian) by Richard, a trusted notary of Hülagü and his successor Abagha. A European who entered the service of the Mongol court, Richard drafted other letters intended for Western audiences and was mentioned in a document presented to the Second Council of Lyons in 1274.
A formal greeting to Louis IX, the intended recipient of the letter, appears to have been omitted by the scribe who copied the letter.
SOME time ago God spoke to our forefathers through prophets concerning these last days variously and in many ways. He spoke to our grandfather Chinggis Khan through his blood relative Teb Tngri (a name which is interpreted as “prophet of God”), miraculously revealing to him events of future times, signifying by making known to the said Teb Tngri: “In the heavens I alone am the omnipotent God, and I appoint you ruler over all peoples and kingdoms, and you will become king of the entire globe, so that you will ‘uproot and demolish, scatter and destroy, build up and plant’ [Jer 1:10]. I therefore proclaim to you that you ought to make known my commission to you to every generation and tongue and tribe of the north, south, east, and west. And you ought to declare it to every single region of the entire globe in which rulers or kings reign, governors govern, lordship is exercised and wherever horses’ hooves may tread, ships may sail, messengers may arrive, and letters be heard, so that those with ears might hear, those hearing might comprehend, those comprehending might believe. In fact, anyone who does not believe in my divine commission ought to consider how those who do not believe in my mandates may be humbled afterward.”
We, however, in the Might of the Everlasting Heaven (that is, of the living God) Hülagü Khan, commander of the army of the Mongols, zealous devastator of the faithless people of the Saracens, benevolent exalter of the Christian faith, vigorous conqueror of enemies, and assuredly the loyal friend of his allies the illustrious king of the Franks Louis and also the princes, dukes, counts, barons, knights, and others, send our greetings to each and every person in the entire kingdom of France in the mercy of God. We made these things known to you by announcing the aforementioned revelation so that you might choose to ally with us without hesitation. For we are fulfilling the mandate of the living God, which if you reflected upon it attentively (as you ought), you would see that our power was conferred by the Lord Messiah himself (that is, the living God). However, lest we perhaps have caused a message of this nature to be written to you in vain, we will explain succinctly a few of the many things which in our times not long ago befell those of our opponents who did not believe in our mandates, or rather those of the living God.
For it pleased our majesty to begin by announcing the divine command to the kings and rulers of the East, that is: the king of the Kästimi, the king of the Naiman, the king of the Merkid, the king of Kirgis, the king of the Nangyaz, the king of the Kitai, the king of the Kangut, the king of the Töbed, the king of the Uihur, the king of Quamul, the king of Ulbäri, the leader of the Quarasan, the sultan of the Persians, the leaders of the Cumans, and in addition to the kings and sultans, princes and leaders of the southern region (that is, those ruling India and the surrounding areas), and also to the rest and countless others, whose names it would breed disgust to enumerate in writing.33 Contrary to the divine edict, they contemptuously resisted the lordship conferred upon us by God, and in their pride, trusting in their own armed forces, they were not the least bit afraid to draw up their battle lines against us in combat. And so that we might summarily pass over these matters, we caused these noxious pests to be destroyed by slaughter. We vigorously attacked their kingdoms, possessions, cities, and fortresses, laying waste each and every one of them as we pleased. However, some of their more prominent men, bolstered by our kindness, allied themselves to our excellency in a friendly manner. And we spared them with all those who looked to them for leadership, and the more prominent of them rejoiced that without hesitation on our part they were permitted to remain there.
And in the other intervening years, the might of the living God leading the way toward the eastern zone, we sent a resolution first to the sultan of the Assassins, that is, the murderer of the circumcised. And we intimated to him that after previously reflecting upon the nature of our authority, he ought speedily to make himself subject to us. However, applauding their fortresses situated on the peaks of the loftiest mountains, and believing himself to possess a vast army and sufficiency of supplies, he instead rashly desired to do battle with us. But we erased the name of Rukn-ad-din [Khurshah] from this earth together with all of his generation, and also his most mighty fortresses, that is, the fortress of Maimundiz, the fortress of Alamut, and each and every fortress we razed to the foundations, nearly one hundred and fifty.34
And once this was accomplished, we sent the foresaid mandate to the kings and princes of the circumcised, and fourteen kings and princes who were reported to be disobedient to us we caused to be destroyed with all their men in the same manner. In fact, when these things were completed, after some time had passed, it pleased us to send the original mandate, as described above, to the caliph of Baghdad. Contemptibly boasting of himself, he by no means hesitated to swear most firmly that he was assuredly the pope, head of the world for the race of the aforementioned Muhammad, that most wicked pseudo-prophet, and that he himself was the all-powerful creator for the aforesaid Muhammad and his entire race, that he had created the heaven and the earth and everything contained in them. And so trusting in his noble eminence and boundless riches, countless fortresses, and the most powerful hosts of his armies, he chose rather to battle against us than graciously to submit to our mandate. However, so that by publicly fighting against him we might subdue other rebels, by the power of the omnipotent God we slew from his forces by our reckoning two thousand of thousands fighters, omitting others, of whom there was a countless multitude. We commanded that a certain patriarch of the Nestorians dwelling in the aforementioned city of Baghdad with his bishops, monks, priests, clerics, and all of the same Christians be separated out from the Saracens one by one and that they be granted enlarged possessions and be permitted to reside in that city quietly and without molestation of their possessions.
After we hanged the sultan of Aleppo and Damascus, his terror-stricken son conveyed to us his wish to become our subject. Pleased by his submission, we sent officials to the same [ruler] throughout his lands and privileges written upon golden tablets, which were a sign of fuller preferment. However, after a little while, incited by the instigation of fate, he reneged on his solemn promise and contrary to himself, proved himself hostile to us. Therefore, when the same person fled, we vigorously assaulted his lands and fortresses and destroyed the cities of Aleppo and Damascus, Haman and Haniz, Baalbek, Harran and Baya.35 After capturing him in flight, we commanded his head to be hung above the gate of the city of Tabriz as an example to other traitors.
We understood without a doubt through John of Hungary that certain Latin slaves had come to the Holy Land for the sake of devotion, against the infidels on behalf of the holy city of Jerusalem. And we do not believe that we ought to conceal from your lordship that through the same John we caused them to be restored to their former liberty. Moreover, you ought to recognize that our excellency is not unacquainted with the fact that, although there are ever so many kings of the western Christians, you nonetheless are distinguished before all others by the splendor of your exceptional zeal, such that, of everyone who is reckoned worthy of the Christian name you are the most assiduously intent upon salvation. For although we had not already sent to you our messengers, as a sign of our particular friendship in honor of the most omnipotent and living God, you took pains to dispatch to our predecessor Güyük through your trustworthy messengers a portable chapel dedicated to the divine name as a special refreshment.36
If at that time, as we said, you were not yet intent whatsoever upon these things which were signified by us, you were much more so intent concerning the rest, since not only by letters, but also by our trusty messengers we have taken care to visit Your Majesty. And touched previously by your friendship, we do not fail to believe that you wish to renew such an alliance with us by reforging a stronger bond between us. Moreover, we wished to reveal ourselves in a friendly manner to your lordship. And at first we believed the highest priest, the pope, to be the king of the Franks or the emperor. But after making a more careful investigation, we realized that he was a holy man praying devotedly to God on behalf of all peoples, taking the place upon earth of the Lord Messiah himself, son of the living God, and that he was the head of all those believing in Christ and calling upon him. And once we understood these things we commanded that the holy city of Jerusalem, detained for so long by sacrilegious men, be given back to him, with all the other things pertaining to that entire kingdom, through our faithful and devoted servant John the Hungarian, follower of the aforesaid Christian faith. And we believe without a doubt that this news has already resounded in your ears at various times.
However, because we are accustomed to retire more gladly to the cooler places of the snowy mountains during the summer heat, after the aforementioned cities of Aleppo and Damascus had been laid waste, and both provisions and forage were for the most part consumed, it pleased us to withdraw to the mountains of Greater Armenia for a little while. And we dispatched a few of our men to the aforesaid places in order to destroy the remnants of the Assassins’ fortresses, in which they were stealthily hiding after contemplating the scarcity of their surviving numbers, and our men fell upon those Babylonian dogs when they crept out of their holes like mice. Yet some of our men, as their offenses deserved, were gnawed to pieces by the aforementioned mice, because they had been deceitful about obeying our commands by invading the possessions of the Franks.37 Although the vengeance wreaked upon those faithless men was not entirely displeasing to us, nor did it even inflict detectable damage upon us, nonetheless our intention is to fulfill utterly and in a short period our plan against the aforesaid Babylonian dogs of the infidel race, just as we also plan against other rebels. Because, however, if they are attacked by land they might find a refuge by the waters of the sea, as we understand it, we have taken pains to inspire Your Eminence so that you might exert your power from the opposite quarter upon the shores of the sea. For through your assiduous precaution with armed vessels in the sea you might check the aforesaid infidel dogs, enemies to us and to yourself equally, and you might take care to obstruct the aforesaid refuge, lest due to a lack of sea defenses they might be able to escape our assaults in any respect.
May you prosper in the Lord Messiah, that is, in the living God, eternally without end. If it pleases you, make known your intentions upon these and other matters with timely dispatch, through your special messengers together with ours. Given in the city of Maragheh in the tenth year of Hülagü’s reign, in the Year of the Dog, on the tenth day of the month of April.
1. F. Schmieder, “Nota sectam maometicam atterendam a tartaris et christianis: The Mongols as Non-believing Apocalyptic Friends Around the Year 1260,” Journal of Millennial Studies 1 (1998), 1–11.
2. Robert Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1382 (London, 1986); Irwin, Mamluks and Crusaders: Men of the Sword and Men of the Pen (Farnham UK-Burlington VT, 2010).
Source: Giles, Matthew Paris’s English History, 1:338–341.
3. Perhaps Henry III, margrave of Meissen, whom Frederick II rewarded with the duchy of Saxony in 1242. Broadly, see Archibald R. Lewis, Nomads and Crusaders, a.d. 1000–1368 (Bloomington IN, 1988).
4. Henry II, duke of Brabant (1235–1248). He later supported his sister’s son, William of Holland, in his bid to become king of Germany.
5. King Wenceslaus of Bohemia (1230–1253) successfully repelled Mongol raids against his kingdom in 1241.
6. Conrad of Hochstadt (1238–1261). He played a key role in the papal-imperial conflict in Germany.
7. Matthew Paris copied several other letters that clearly influenced his perception of the nature of the Mongol threat, all reproduced in Giles’s translation (3:449–455).
Source: Giles, Matthew Paris’s English History, 1:341–348.
8. Frederick II had married Henry III’s sister Isabella in 1235.
9. Frederick here refers to the Mongols’ belief that the world had been granted to them by heaven and that all rulers were destined to become subjects of their own ruler, the Great Khan. This meant that all diplomatic contacts tended to be viewed as preliminaries to capitulation and letters sent to Western authorities typically demanded compliance to Mongol plans of world domination, formal submission, tribute, and military service.
Source: Rodenberg, Epistolae saeculi XIII, 1:721–722, no. 821.
10. That is, Christians signed with the cross.
11. Gregory here refers to the brother of Bela IV, Coloman of Lodoveria (1208–1241), who married the daughter of Duke Leszek of Poland and was made titular king of Halych. He became duke of Slavonia in 1226, and died of wounds inflicted by Mongol forces at the battle of Mohi (April 11, 1241).
Source: Rodenberg, Epistolae saeculi XIII, 1:722–723, no. 822.
12. To save parchment, the scribe has omitted a paragraph nearly identical to that mentioning Sennacharib in No. 41 above.
Source: Continuatio Sancrucensis, 1234–1266, ed. D. Wilhelmus Wattenbach, MGH SS, vol. 9 (1851), 640–641.
13. The scribe here refers to the paragraph in No. 41 above that describes the crusade indulgence and privileges offered to those who took the cross against the Mongols.
14. That is, forced to journey to Rome for the imposition of penance and absolution because their crime was one reserved to papal penitentiaries.
15. That is, Butan.
16. Frederick II, duke of Austria and Styria (1230–1246).
17. Probably Henry II, duke of Lower Silesia, who with Conrad, duke of Mazovia, was defeated by Mongol forces in February of 1241.
Source: Christopher R. Cheney and Frederick M. Powicke, Councils and Synods, with Other Documents Relating to the English Church, vol. 2, pt. 1, A.D. 1205–1265 (Oxford, 1964), 339–340.
Source: Giles, Matthew Paris’s English History, 2:28–31.
18. This may be a garbled reference to Chinggis Khan, who had four sons by his first wife. To Ögödei, who succeeded him as Great Khan, he gave his lands in eastern Asia (including China); to Chagatai, Central Asia and northern Iran; and to his eldest son, Jochi, the newly conquered lands of Russia and Ruthenia. Because Jochi predeceased his father, his lands were divided among his sons, among them Batu, who invaded Russia, Poland, and Hungary before being recalled to eastern Asia after Ögödei’s death.
19. This perhaps refers to the Mongols’ devastation of Azerbaijan and Georgia and their defeat of the Cumans (along with their Russian allies) on the river Kalka in 1223.
Source: J. Alberigo et al., eds., Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, 3d ed. (Bologna, 1973), 297.
20. The reports of both missions have been published. See Christopher Dawson, Mission to Asia, Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 8 (Toronto-Buffalo NY-London, 1980). For an updated translation of William of Rubruck’s mission, and a fuller description of the Mongol missions, see Peter Jackson and David Morgan, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck: His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Mongke, 1253–1255 (London, 1990), esp. pp. 1–55.
Source: The Annals of Burton, in H. R. Luard, ed., Annales monastici, 5 vols., Rolls Series 36 (London, 1866–1869), 1:491–495.
21. Il’khan was an honorific term meaning ruler.
22. Thomas’s point here seems to be that he is not conveying general information as he might otherwise do, but rather an urgent news bulletin that requires an immediate response.
23. The phrase “unexpected opportunity” can also be read as “sudden overthrow” or “misfortune,” reflecting the Latin settlers’ ambiguous feelings regarding the downfall of Baghdad and the death of the last Ayyubid caliph. The actual circumstances of the Mongol triumph in this case derived from a series of unforeseen contingencies.
24. Despite the erroneous initial “H.,” this refers to Bohemond V, prince of Antioch (1233–1252).
25. That is, Hülagü.
26. An-Nasir Yusuf, ruler of Aleppo (1236–1260), Damascus (1250–1260), and Baalbek. For his fate, see document No. 49 below.
27. That is, the German-speaking regions of Europe.
28. As well as the overwrought and urgent language of this appeal, there is the distinct sense that the author is quite aware of the extremely complex financial conditions and their causes in his lands and the difficulty of hiring mercenaries, as well as the risks for them.
29. The several mentions of Acre in the letter are ominous, and the author’s estimation is accurate. The city held out for thirty years after this letter was written. See below, Part X.
Source: Annals of Burton, 495–499.
30. Henry III of England and his wife Eleanor of Provence.
31. A similar observation on the incapacity of the Mongols, or infidels generally, to make treaties is expressed by Humbert of Romans; see No. 70 below.
32. Or, “so impious.”
Source: Paul Meyvaert, “An Unknown Letter of Hülagü, Il-Khan of Persia, to King Louis IX of France,” Viator 11 (1980), 245–259, text 252–259.
33. On the lists of Mongol conquests, see George D. Painter, “The Tartar Relation,” Excursus B, in R. A. Skelton, T. E. Marston, G. D. Painter, eds., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven CT, 1965), esp. 104–106.
34. The Assassins, an Ismailite sect with adherents in northern Syria and Palestine, were said by Matthew Paris to have sent ambassadors to western European leaders requesting aid against the Mongols. After Latin settlers established themselves in the Near East they became alternately targets for “assassination” and potential allies with the Assassins against other competing powers in the region. The Latin imagination was captivated by the Assassins, and they quickly became the stuff of legend, particularly the leader of the Syrian branch, who became known as “the Old Man of the Mountain.” The Assassins came under threat from the Mongols when the latter began to expand into Asia Minor, and the Assassins, as Muslim “heretics,” could expect little help from other Muslim powers in the Near East. The Mongol general Hülagü captured the Assassin “headquarters” in the fortress of Alamut in Persia and other strongholds in 1256, while the Syrian branch lost its main castle of Masyad to the Mongols in 1260 and its remaining holdings to the sultan Baibars in 1272. Matthew’s account is in Giles, Matthew Paris’s English History, 1:131–132, 312–314; 3:449–552. See also J. J. Saunders, “Matthew Paris and the Mongols,” in T. A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke, eds., Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson (Toronto, 1969), 116–132; Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma‘ilis (London, 1994).
35. The Hebrew chronicler Bar Hebraeus mentions Harran, Baklash, Hama, B’elbek (Baalbek?)-Harim as among the cities conquered by Hülagü in 1260. E. A. Wallis Budge, trans., The Chronography of Gregory Abu’l Faraj, the Son of Aaron, the Hebrew Physician, Commonly Known as Bar Hebraeus (London, 1932).
36. When Louis IX had landed at Cyprus in 1248, he received messengers from the Mongol commander Eljigidei, who hoped to ally with him against the Muslims. The envoys reported that Güyük had become a Christian, and so in 1249 Louis had sent a return embassy to the Great Khan. Led by Andrew of Longjumeau, it carried among its gifts a portable chapel made of scarlet cloth.
37. Perhaps an allusion to the Mongol general Kitbuqa’s sack of Sidon and his ensuing defeat by a Mamluk army in September 1260, at ‘Ain Jalut.