MANDEVILLE, JEHAN DE ("Sir John Mandeville"), the name claimed by the compiler of a singular book of travels, written in French, and published between 1357 and 1371. By aid of translations into many other languages it acquired extraor dinary popularity, while a few interpolated words in a particular edition of an English version gained for Mandeville in modern times the certainly spurious credit of being "the father of English prose." In his preface the compiler calls himself a knight, and states that he was born and bred in England, of the town of St. Albans; had crossed the sea on Michaelmas Day 1322; had travelled by way of Turkey (Asia Minor), Armenia the little (Cilicia) and the great, Tartary, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt upper and lower, Libya, great part of Ethiopia, Chaldaea, Amazonia, India the less, the greater and the middle, and many countries about India; had often been to Jerusalem, and had written in Romance as more generally understood than Latin. In the body of the work we hear that he had been at Paris and Constantinople; had served the sultan of Egypt a long time in his wars against the Bedawin, had been vainly offered by him a princely marriage and a great estate on condition of renouncing Christianity, and had left Egypt under sultan Melech Madabron, i.e., Muzaffar or (who reigned in ; had been at Mount Sinai, and had visited the Holy Land with letters under the great seal of the sultan, which gave him extraordinary facilities; had been in Russia, Livonia, Cracow, Lithuania, "en roialme dare sten" (? of Daresten or Silistria), and many other parts near Tartary, but not in Tartary itself ; had drunk of the well of youth at Polombe (Quilon on the Malabar coast), and still seemed to feel the better; had taken astronomical observations on the way to Lamory (Sumatra), as well as in Brabant, Germany, Bohemia and still farther north; had been at an isle called Pathen in the Indian Ocean; had been at Cansay (Hangchow-fu) in China, and had served the emperor of China fifteen months against the king of Manzi; had been among rocks of adamant in the Indian Ocean ; had been through a haunted valley, which he places near "Milstorak" (i.e., Malasgird in Armenia) ; had been driven home against his will in 1357 by arthritic gout; and had written his book as a consolation for his "wretched rest."
This personal history of Mandeville is mere invention. There is no reasonable doubt that the travels were in large part com piled by a Liege physician, known as Johains a la Barbe or Jehan a la Barbe, otherwise Jehan de Bourgogne, who drew his informa tion not from his own travels, but from the works of Odoric, Carpini, Vincent de Beauvais, and others. Jehan a la Barbe is himself a man of mystery.
A modernized extract quoted by the Liege herald, Louis Abry (1643-1720), at third or fourth hand from the lost fourth book of the Myreur des Hystors of Johans des Preis, styled d'Oultre mouse, states that "Jean de Bourgogne, dit a la revealed himself on his deathbed to d'Oultremouse, whom he made his executor, and described himself in his will as "messire Jean de Mandeville, chevalier, comte de Montfort en Angleterre et seig neur de lisle de Campdi et du château Having had the misfortune to kill an unnamed count in his own country, he en gaged himself to travel through the three parts of the world, ar rived at Liege in 1343, was a great naturalist, profound philoso on in Madabron apparently represents the Arabic form, though, as a matter of fact, its use in such a case is very odd.
pher and astrologer, and had a remarkable knowledge of physic. In the now destroyed church of the Guillelmins was a tombstone of Mandeville, with a Latin inscription stating that he was other wise named "ad Barbam," was a professor of medicine, and died at Liege on Nov. 17, 13 72 ; this inscription is quoted as far back as 1462.
Whether after the appearance of the Travels either de Bour gogne or "Mangevilayn" visited England is very doubtful. St. Albans Abbey had a sapphire ring, and Canterbury a crystal orb, said to have been given by Mandeville ; but these might have been sent from Liege, and it will appear later that the Liege physician possessed and wrote about precious stones. St. Albans also had a legend that a ruined marble tomb of Mandeville (rep resented cross-legged and in armour, with sword and shield) once stood in the abbey.