CARPINI, JOANNES DE PLANO, the first noteworthy European explorer of the Mongol empire (in the 13th century), and the author of the earliest important Western work on northern and central Asia, Russian Europe and other regions of the Tatar dominion. He appears to have been born at Piano della Magione (formerly Pian del Carpine) near Perugia. He was one of the com panions and disciples of his countryman, St. Francis of Assisi, and can hardly have been younger than the latter, born in 1182. Joannes took a foremost part in Franciscan teaching in northern Europe, holding successively the offices of warden (custos) in Saxony, and of provincial (minister) of Germany, and afterwards of Spain, perhaps of Barbary and of Cologne. He was in Cologne at the time of the great Mongol invasion of eastern Europe and of the disastrous battle of Liegnitz (April 9, . The dread of the Tatars was still on men's minds four years later, when Pope Innocent IV. despatched the first formal Catholic mission to the Mongols partly to protest against the latter's in vasion of Christian lands, partly to gain trustworthy information regarding the hordes and their purposes; behind there may have lurked the idea of opening diplomatic intercourse with a power whose alliance might be invaluable against Islam.
At the head of this mission the pope placed Friar Joannes, at this time certainly not far from 65 years of age ; and to his dis cretion nearly everything in the accomplishment of the mission seems to have been left. The legate started from Lyons, where the pope then resided, on Easter day (April 16, 1245), and was joined at Breslau by another Minorite, Benedict the Pole, ap pointed to act as interpreter. The onward journey lay by Kiev; the Tatar posts were entered at Kanev ; and thence the route ran across the Dnieper (Neper, Nepere, in Carpini and Benedict) to the Don and Volga (Ethil in Benedict; Carpini is the first West ern to give us the modern name). Upon the last-named stood the Ordu or camp of Batu, the famous conqueror of eastern Europe, and the supreme Mongol commander on the western frontiers of the empire, as well as one of the most senior princes of the house of Jenghiz. Here the envoys, with their presents, had to pass between two fires, before being presented to the prince (beginning of April 1246). Batu ordered them to proceed onward to the court of the supreme khan in Mongolia ; and on Easter day once more (April 8, 1246) they started on the second and most formidable part of their journey—"so ill," writes the legate, "that we could scarcely sit a horse ; and throughout all that Lent our food had been nought but millet with salt and water, and with only snow melted in a kettle for drink." Their bodies were tightly bandaged to enable them to endure the ex cessive fatigue of this enormous ride, which led them across the Jaec or Ural river, and north of the Caspian and the Aral to the Jaxartes or Syr Daria (quidam fluvius magnus cujus nomen ignoramus), and the Mohammedan cities which then stood on its banks; then along the shores of the Dzungarian lakes; and so forward, till, on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene (July 22), they reached at last the imperial camp called Sire Orda (i.e., Yellow Pavilion), near Karakorum and the Orkhon river—this stout hearted old man having thus ridden something like 3,000m. in 106 days.
Since the death of Okkodai the imperial authority had been in interregnum. Kuyuk, Okkodai's eldest son, had now been desig nated to the throne ; his formal election in a great Kurultai, or diet of the tribes, took place while the friars were at Sira Orda, along with 3,00o to 4,000 envoys and deputies from all parts of Asia and eastern Europe, bearing homage, tribute and presents. They afterwards, on Aug. 24, witnessed the formal enthronement at another camp in the vicinity called the Golden Ordu, after which they were presented to the emperor. It was not till No vember that they got their dismissal, bearing a letter to the pope in Mongol, Arabic and Latin, which was little else than a brief imperious assertion of the khan's office as the scourge of God. Then commenced their long winter journey homeward ; often they had to lie on the bare snow, or on the ground scraped bare of snow with the traveller's foot. They reached Kiev on June 9, 1247. There, and on their further journey, the Slavonic Chris tians welcomed them as risen from the dead, with festive hos pitality. Crossing the Rhine at Cologne, they found the pope still at Lyons, and there delivered their report and the khan's letter.
Not long afterwards Friar Joannes was rewarded with the arch bishopric of Antivari in Dalmatia, and was sent as legate to St. Louis. He died on Aug. 1, 1252; hence it is clear that the priest did not long survive the hardships of his journey.
IIe recorded the information that he had collected in a work variously entitled in the mss. Historia Mongalorum quos nos Tartaros appellamus, and Liber Tartarorum, or Tatarorum. This treatise is divided into eight ample chapters on the country, climate, manners, religion, character, history, policy and tactics of the Tatars, and on the best way of opposing them, followed by a single (ninth) chapter on the regions passed through. Friar Joannes' Historia is in many ways the chief literary memorial of European overland expansion before Marco Polo. It first re vealed the Mongol world to Catholic Christendom; its account of Tatar manners, customs and history is perhaps the best treatment of the subject by any Christian writer of the middle ages. We may especially notice, moreover, its four name-lists: of the nations conquered by the Mongols ; of the nations which had up to this time (1245-47) successfully resisted; of the Mongol princes; and of the witnesses to the truth of his narrative, includ ing various merchants trading in Kiev whom he had met. All these catalogues, unrivalled in Western mediaeval literature, are of the utmost historical value.
For a long time the Liber Tartarorum was known chiefly through an abridgment in the vast compilation of Vincent of Beauvais (Speculum Historiale) made in the generation follow ing the traveller's own, and printed first in 1473. Hakluyt (1598) and Bergeron (1634) published portions of the original work; but the complete and genuine text was not printed till 1838, when it was put forth by M. D'Avezac as an editorial masterpiece embodied (1839) in the 4th volume of the Recueil de voyages et de memoires of the Geographical Society of Paris. It was edited by C. R. Beazley for the Hakluyt Society in 1913. Joannes' companion, Benedictus Polonus, also left a brief narrative taken down from his oral relation. This was first published by M. D'Avezac in the work just named.