This Is The Itinerary Of The German Knight
William Of Boldensele, Written In 1336 At The Desire Of Cardinal
Talleyrand De Perigord.
A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville
leaves no doubt of the fact that the latter has followed its thread, using
its suggestions, and on many subjects its expressions, though digressing
and expanding on every side, and too often eliminating the singular good
sense of the German traveller.
After such a comparison we may indicate as
examples Boldensele's account of Cyprus (Mandeville, Halliwell's ed.
1866, p. 28, and p. 10), of Tyre and the coast of Palestine (Mandeville,
29, 30, 33, 34), of the journey from Gaza to Egypt (34), passages about
Babylon of Egypt (40), about Mecca (42), the general account of Egypt
(45), the pyramids (52), some of the particular wonders of Cairo, such as
the slave-market, the chicken-hatching stoves, and the apples of Paradise,
i.e. plantains (49), the Red Sea (57), the convent on Sinai (58, 60),
the account of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (74-76), etc."
He adds: "It is curious that no passage in Mandeville can be plausibly
traced to Marco Polo, with one exception. This is (Halliwell's ed., p.
163) where he states that at Ormus the people, during the great heat, lie
in water, - a circumstance mentioned by Polo, though not by Odoric. We
should suppose it most likely that this fact had been interpolated in the
copy of Odoric used by Mandeville; for, if he had borrowed it direct from
Polo, he would have borrowed more." (Encyclopaedia Britannica, p. 474.)
"Leaving this question, there remains the more complex one whether the
book contains, in any measure, facts and knowledge acquired by actual
travels and residence in the East. We believe that it may, but only as a
small portion of the whole, and that confined entirely to the section of
the work which treats of the Holy Land, and of the different ways of
getting thither, as well as of Egypt, and in general of what we understand
by the Levant." (Ibid. p. 473.)
Dr. Warner deals the final blow in the National Biography: "The
alphabets which he gives have won him some credit as a linguist, but only
the Greek and the Hebrew (which were readily accessible) are what they
pretend to be, and that which he calls Saracen actually comes from the
Cosmographia of aethicus! His knowledge of Mohammedanism and its Arabic
formulae impressed even Yule. He was, however, wholly indebted for that
information to the Liber de Statu Saracenorum of William of Tripoli
(circa 1270), as he was to the Historiae Orientis of Hetoum, the
Armenian (1307), for much of what he wrote about Egypt. In the last case,
indeed, he shows a rare sign of independence, for he does not, with
Hetoum, end his history of the sultanate about 1300, but carries it onto
the death of En-Nasir (1341), and names two of his successors. Although
his statements about them are not historically accurate, this fact and a
few other details suggest that he may really have been in Egypt, if not at
Jerusalem, but the proportion of original matter is so very far short of
what might be expected that even this is extremely doubtful."
With this final quotation, we may take leave of John of Mandeville, alias
John a Beard.
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