RUBRUQUIS (or RuBRoucK), WILLIAM OF (c. 1215 1270 ; fl. 1253-55), Franciscan friar, one of the chief mediaeval travellers and travel-writers. Nothing is known of him save what can be gathered from his own narrative, and from Roger Bacon, his contemporary and brother Franciscan. The name of Rubruquis ("Fratris Willielmi de Rubruquis," probably meaning "of Ru brouck," Flanders) is found in the imperfect ms. printed by Hakluyt in his collection, and followed in his English translation, as well as in the completer issue of the English by Purchas. (Itinerarium fratris Willielmi de Rubruquis de ordine fratrum Minorurn, Galli, Anno gratiae 1253, ad partes Orientales.) Friar William went to Tartary under orders from Louis IX. (St. Louis). That king, at an earlier date, viz., December 1248, when in Cyprus, had been visited by alleged envoys from Elchiga day (Ilchikadai, Ilchikdai), who commanded the Mongol hosts in Armenia and Persia. The king then despatched a return mis sion consisting of Friar Andrew of Longjumeau or Lonjumel and other ecclesiastics, who carried presents and letters for both Ilchikadai and the Great Khan. They reached the court of the latter in the winter of 1249-5o, when there was no actual khan on the throne ; and they returned, along with Tatar envoys, bear ing a letter to Louis from the Mongol regent-mother which was couched in terms so arrogant that the king repented sorely of having sent such a mission. The envoys reached the king at Caesarea, between March 1251 and May 1252. But not long after the king, hearing that the Tatar prince Sartak, son of Batu, was a "baptized Christian," felt moved to open communication with him, and for this purpose deputed Friar William of Rubrouck. The former rebuff had made the king chary of sending formal embassies, and Friar William on every occasion, beginning with a sermon delivered in St. Sophia's on Palm Sunday (i.e., April 13) 1253, disclaimed that character.
Friar William apparently received his commission at Acre, but he travelled by way of Constantinople and there received letters to some of the Tatar chiefs from the emperor, Baldwin de Courtenay, the last of the Latin dynasty.
Rubrouck and his party landed at Soldaia, or Sudak, on the Crimean coast, then a centre of intercourse between the Medi terranean world and what is now S. Russia. Equipped with horses and carts for the steppe, they travelled successively to the courts (i.e., the nomad camps) of Scacatai (Kadan?), Sartak and Batu, thus crossing the Don and arriving at the Volga: of both these rivers Friar William gives vivid and interesting sketches. Batu Khan (q.v.) kept the travellers for some time in suspense, and then referred them to the Great Khan himself, an order involving the enormous journey to Mongolia. The actual travelling of the
party from the Crimea to the khan's court near Karakorum cannot have been, on a rough calculation, less than 5,000 m., and the return journey to Lajazzo in Cilicia would be longer by Soo to 700 m. The envoys embarked on the "Euxine" on May 7, 1253. They were at the camp of the Great Khan from Dec. 27, 1253, to about July io, 1254. They reached Tripoli on the way home on Aug. 15, 1255.
Roger Bacon, in the geographical section of the Opus Maius (c. 1262), cites the traveller repeatedly and copiously, describing him as "frater Wilhelmus quem dominus rex Franciae misit ad Tartaros, Anno Domini 1253 . . . qui perlustravit regiones orientis et aquilonis et loca in medio his annexa, et scripsit haec praedicta illustri regi; quem librum diligenter vidi et cum eius auctore contuli." (See Opus Maius, Oxford edition of 1897, i. 66.) Add to this William's own incidental particulars as to his being-like his precursor, Friar John de Plano Carpini-a very heavy man (ponderosus valde), and we know no more of his per sonality, except the abundant indications of character afforded by the story itself. These paint for us an honest, pious, stout hearted, acute and most intelligent observer, keen in the acquisition of knowledge, the author of one of the best narratives of travel in existence. His language indeed is dog-Latin of the most un Ciceronian quality; but it is in his hands a pithy and transparent medium of expression. In spite of all the difficulties of com munication, and of the badness of his turgemannus or dragoman, he gathered a mass of particulars, wonderfully true or near the truth, not only as to Asiatic nature, geography, ethnography and manners, but as to religion and language.
The narrative of Rubrouck, after Roger Bacon's copious use of it, seems to have dropped out of sight, though five mss. are still known to exist: the chief of these are (I) Corp. Chr. Coll., Cambridge, No.
66, fols. 67 v.-1 io v. of about 132o; (2) No. 181 of the same library, fols. 321-98, of about 1270-90; (3) Leiden Univ. Libr., No. 77 (formerly 104), fols. 16o r.--190 r. of about 129o. It has no place in the famous collections of the 14th century. It first appeared im perfectly in Hakluyt (1598 and 1599), as we have mentioned. See the two editions in the Hakluyt Society's publications, (i.) William of Rubrouck . . . John of Pian de Carpine, trans. and edited by William W. Rockhill (London, 1900) ; (ii.) Texts and Versions of . . . Carpini and . . . Rubruquis . . . , edited by C. Raymond Beaz ley (London, 1903). See also Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, ii. 266, 278-79, 281, 303, 320-82, 421, in. 17-18, 31-32, 46, 69, 84-85, 88, 98, ioi, 105, 188, 336-37, 544.