John Mandeville

“ It is plain that hidden away in the odd corners of the world are many little peoples, as innocent as they are insignificant, of whom one might say in the language of cold science very much what in the romantic pages of Sir John Mandeville is expressed thus: "and alle be it that thei ben not cristned, ne have no perfyt lawe, zit natheless of kyndily lawe thei ben fulle of all Vertue, and thei eschewen alle Vices and alle Malices and alle Synnes." ”

“ Near the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared the book of far wider influence which bears the name of Sir John Mandeville, and in the various editions of it myths and legends of the Dead Sea and of the pillar of salt burst forth into wonderful luxuriance.
This book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every day thrown up from the water "as large as a horse"; that, though it contains no living thing, it has been shown that men thrown into it can not die ”

“ In the meantime it seems well worth while calling to attention, that the accepted narrative of Sir John Mandeville as it is called, and which may have been written by a physician of the name of John of Burgoigne under an assumed name, contains a number of interesting anticipations of facts that were supposed to enter into the domain of human knowledge much later in the intellectual development of the race. ”

“ Like many other marvellous stories related by Sir John Mandeville, they were told by Pliny, in his Natural History, nearly 1200 years previously. For instance, in Book 7, chap, li., devoted to Man, he quotes Ctesias as saying that in India is another race of men, who are known as Monocoli, who have only one leg, but are able to leap with surprising agility. The same people are also called Sciapodœ, because they are in the habit of lying on their backs during the time of extreme heat and protect themselves from the sun by the shade of their feet. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary that I should insist on the extraordinary value of this statement and formal admission by the Crown that London and Middlesex had been held to farm by the elder Geoffrey de Mandeville—that is, towards the close of the eleventh century, or, at latest, in the beginning of the twelfth—and that the amount of the firma was £300 a year. One cannot understand how such a fact, of which the historical student cannot fail to grasp the importance, can have been overlooked so long, when it has virtually figured in Dugdale's Baronage for more than two centuries. ”

“ There are other distinguished travelers whose inspiration came to them during the Thirteenth Century though their works were published in the early part of the next century. Some of these we know mainly through their adaptation and incorporation into his work without due recognition, by that first great writer of spurious travels Sir John Mandeville. ”

“ To illustrate in detail the working of those principles to which the Bishop of Oxford thus refers, is the chief object I have set before myself in these pages. For this purpose I have chosen, to form the basis of my narrative, the career of Geoffrey de Mandeville, as the most perfect and typical presentment of the feudal and anarchic spirit that stamps the reign of Stephen. By fixing our glance upon one man, and by tracing his policy and its fruits, it is possible to gain a clearer perception of the true tendencies at work, and to obtain a firmer grasp of the essential principles involved. ”

“ The immemorial liberties which had been enjoyed for generations, and confirmed by William and Henry, were taken from the city, which for the first and last time in its history was put 'in demesne.' The Earl of Essex, Geoffrey de Mandeville, whose father is said by Stow to have been portreeve, was given Middlesex 'in farm' with the Tower for his castle, and no person could hold pleas either in city or county without his permission. The feelings of the Londoners were fully roused. Though Stephen was actually a prisoner, and Matilda's fortunes never seemed brighter, her cause was lost.... ”

“ It should be observed that this pedigree is not intended to show all the children. It gives those only which are required for our special purpose. On some points there is still need of more original information. No doubt Beatrice, wife of William de Say, was sister, and not daughter, to Geoffrey de Mandeville. ”

“ Mandeville’s philosophy gave great offence at the time, and has always been stigmatized as false, cynical and degrading. His main thesis is that the actions of men cannot be divided into lower and higher. The higher life of man is merely a fiction introduced by philosophers and rulers to simplify government and the relations of society. ”

“ G. F. Warner, my readers must share with me, for without the help of his splendid edition of the ‘Egerton’ version and the French text, the popular ‘Mandeville’ could not have been attempted. My second acknowledgment is of a more personal nature. Roxburghe Club books are never easy to obtain, and the few copies of the Mandeville allowed to be sold were priced at £20 each. ”

“ And they say, that they that be clothed be folk of another world, or they be folk that trow not in God. And they say, that they believe in God that formed the world, and that made Adam and Eve and all other things. And they wed there no wives, for all the women there be common and they forsake no man. And they say they sin if they refuse any man; and so God commanded to Adam and Eve and to all that come of him, when he said, Crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram. And therefore may no man in that country say, This is my wife ”

“ Now, the very first charter quoted by Madox himself, in support of his own view, is the creation by Stephen of the earldom of Essex in favour of Geoffrey de Mandeville. The formula there is quite vague. Geoffrey is to hold "bene et in pace et libere et quiete et honorifice sicut alii Comites mei de terrâ meâ melius vel honorificentius tenent Comitatus suos unde Comites sunt." Here there is nothing about the "third penny," and we must therefore ask whether its grant is included in the above formula; that is to say, whether an earl received his "third penny" as a mere matter of course. ”

“ It is, at any rate, a remarkable fact that the only known charter by which Stephen creates an earldom—being that to Geoffrey de Mandeville (1140) —does not grant a pennyworth of land, while the largest grantee of lands known to us, namely, William d'Ypres, was never created an earl. [805] Then, again, as to "the third penny." It is not even mentioned in the above creation-charter, and there is no evidence that "the third penny of the county was given" to all Stephen's earls; indeed, as I have elsewhere shown, it was probably limited to a few (see Appendix H) . ”

“ Denying any form of moral sense or conscience, he regards all the social virtues as evolved from the instinct for self-preservation, the give-and-take arrangements between the partners in a defensive and offensive alliance, and the feelings of pride and vanity artificially fed by politicians, as an antidote to dissension and chaos. Mandeville’s ironical paradoxes are interesting mainly as a criticism of the “amiable” idealism of Shaftesbury, and in comparison with the serious egoistic systems of Hobbes and Helvetius. ”

“ Sometimes described as the firma of "London," sometimes "of Middlesex," and sometimes "of London and Middlesex," its identity never changes; it is always, and beyond the shadow of question, the firma of Middlesex {358} inclusive of London. The history of this ancient payment reveals a persistent endeavour of the Crown to increase its amount, an endeavour which was eventually foiled. Under the first Geoffrey de Mandeville (William I. and William II.) , it was £300. Nearly doubled by Henry I., it was yet reduced to £300 by his charter to the citizens of London. ”

“ And, when he was in that isle, he knew well that it was the isle, where he had heard speak his own language before and the calling of oxen at the plough; and that was possible thing.
But how it seemeth to simple men unlearned, that men ne may not go under the earth, and also that men should fall toward the heaven from under. But that may not be, upon less than we may fall toward heaven from the earth where we be. For from what part of the earth that men dwell, either above or beneath, it seemeth always to them that dwell that they go more right than any other folk. ”

“ Its statement is confirmed {38} by Ordericus Vitalis, who distinctly mentions that the Tower was in charge of William de Mandeville when Randulf Flambard was there imprisoned in 1101. [101] This may help to explain an otherwise puzzling fact, namely, that a Geoffrey de Mandeville, who was presumably his father, appears as a witness to charters of a date subsequent to this. [102]
Geoffrey de Mandeville founded the Benedictine priory of Hurley, [103] and we know the names of his two wives, Athelais and Leceline. ”

“ Mandeville ridiculed this ingenious fiction in the preface to a second part of the 'Fable of the Bees' added to later editions. The sixth edition appeared in 1729, the ninth in 1755, and it has been often reprinted. Berkeley replied to Mandeville in the second dialogue of 'Alciphron' (1732) , to which Mandeville replied in 'A Letter to Dion' in the same year. John Brown (1715-1766) [q. v.] , in his 'Essay upon Shaftesbury's Characteristics' (1751) , also attacks Mandeville as well as Shaftesbury. ”

“ And in summer, by all the countries, fall many tempests and many hideous thunders and leits and slay much people and beasts also full often-time. And suddenly is there passing heat, and suddenly also passing cold; and it is the foulest country and the most cursed and the poorest that men know. And their prince, that governeth that country, that they clepe Batho, dwelleth at the city of Orda. And truly no good man should not dwell in that country, for the land and the country is not worthy hounds to dwell in. It were a good country to sow in thistle and briars and broom and thorns and briars ”

“ At a later day Sir T. Herbert calls Odoric "travelling companion of our Sir John"; and Purchas, with most perverse injustice, whilst calling Mandeville, next to Polo, "if next, . . . the greatest Asian traveller that ever the world had," insinuates that Odoric's story was stolen from Mandeville's. Mandeville himself is crafty enough, at least in one passage, to anticipate criticism by suggesting the probability of his having travelled with Odoric (see p. 282, and below) . ”

“ Che tracta de le piu marauegliose cose e piu notabile che si trouyns in le parte del Mondo. Bologna, per mi Piero et Jacobo fratelli da Campii, 1497. 4o. B.L.
C. 32, e. 2/2. Mandeville (Sir John) the Traveller. Johannis de montevilla Itinerari in partes Iherosolimitanas. Et in ulteriores transmarinas. G.L. 1500? 4o.
Grenville, 6711. Another copy of Sir John Mandeville's travels. Impressa in Venetia, per Zuan Baptista Sessa. Anno 1504. Adi 29, Luio. 4o. B.L.
280, f. 32. Mandeville (Sir John) the Traveller. I. de Mandavilla. ”

“ The re-marriage of the Countess of Essex to Payn de Beauchamp, and her parentage, by him, of Simon, are both well established, but the date of her death is taken from the Chronicle, and seems suspiciously late. So also does that which is assigned to her brother, the Earl of Oxford, namely, 1194, fifty-two years after the charter of the Empress. Still, the fact that his mother survived her husband for twenty-two years implies that her children may have been comparatively young at his death. Both Aubrey and Rohese may therefore have been several years junior to Geoffrey de Mandeville. ”

“ That is to say: ‘We trow well, that thy power is great upon thy subjects. We may not suffer thine high pride. We be not in purpose to fulfil thy great covetise. Lord be with thee; for our Lord is with us. Farewell.’ And other answer might he not have of them.
And also they make their sacrament of the altar of Therf bread, for our Lord made it of such bread, when he made his Maundy. And on the Shere-Thursday make they their Therf bread, in token of the Maundy, and dry it at the sun, and keep it all the year, and give it to sick men, instead of God’s body. ”

“ The acceptance of this view will at once dispose of the alleged "disappearance of the portreeve," with the difficulties it has always presented, and the conjectures to which it has given rise. [1026] The style of the "portreeve" indeed disappears, but his office does not. In the person of the Norman vicecomes, it preserves an unbroken existence. Geoffrey de Mandeville steps, as sheriff, into the shoes of Ansgar the portreeve. ”

“ These beasts above-said they let take when they be young, and nourish them so with alms, as many as they may find. And I asked them if it had not been better to have given that relief to poor men, rather than to those beasts. And they answered me and said, that they had no poor men amongst them in that country; and though it had been so that poor men had been among them, yet were it greater alms to give it to those souls that do there their penance. ”

“ He appears again, as ‘John with the Beard,’ in the Latin vulgate version of Mandeville's ‘Travels.’ Mandeville is there made to say that, when in Egypt, he met about the Sultan's court a venerable and clever physician ‘sprung from our own parts;’ that long afterwards at Liège, on his way home in 1355, he recognised the same physician in Master John ‘ad Barbam,’ whom he consulted when laid up with arthritic gout in the street Basse Sauvenière ”

“ Quo audito, abbas ... admirans quomodo quod tueri deberet, fure nequior diripuisset" etc.
William died excommunicate for this, but his brother Peter made some slight compensation later. [1196] It was not unusual for conscience or the Church to extort more or less restitution for lawless conduct, as, indeed, in the case of Geoffrey de Mandeville and his son. So, too, Earl Ferrers made a grant to Burton Abbey "propter dampna a me et meis Ecclesiæ predictæ illata" (cf. p. 276, n. 3) , previous to going on pilgrimage to S. Jago de Compostella—an early instance of a pilgrimage thither. ”