MANDEVILLE, Sot John. The alleged author of a mediaeval book of travels which en joyed great popularity. A large number of manuscripts are in existence, the most import ant of which are in Latin, French and Eng lish. The earliest version is in French, dating from the latter part of the 14th century, and upon this all the others appear to be more or less directly based. There is no English manu script antedating the 15th century. The state ments in the prologue regarding the translation are to be distrusted, and the autobiographical matter is contradictory. An exaggerated im portance has sometimes been attached to the compiler of the work as the father of English prose, because of the statement in one of the English manuscripts that he had translated it out of French into English in order that every man of his nation might understand it. Errors in the translation prove that the man who wrote the French version and the man who made the English rendering cannot have been one and the same person.
The travels consist, in the main, of an ac count of the Holy Land and the routes thither, followed by a description of various parts of Asia. The narrative is almost wholly spurious, being made up of paraphrases and borrowing from various sources — travel-books, bestiaries, works on Eastern manners, legends, romances, etc. The first half of the book is chiefly de pendent upon the travels of William of Bolden sele, a German who flourished in the 14th cen tury, and the second part upon the work of Friar Odoric of Pordenone (about 1330). The only portions which may reflect personal ex perience are those dealing with Jerusalem and Egypt, which it is not impossible that the com piler may have visited. The story abounds in all kinds of adventures and marvels, related with an air of sober truth. There are accounts of monsters and curiously misshapen men, of regions haunted by devils, of the Fountain of Youth, of the Phoenix, of the realm of Prester John, etc. The narrator must have been a man
of wide reading, and he certainly displays con siderable skill in the selection and arrangement of his materials.
In the prologue the author states that his name is °John Maundeville, knyght," b. at Saint Albans, England, and that he "passed the see," in 1322 (1332), whereupon he traveled through various countries. The epilogue asserts that the gout forced him to return, and that he occupied his leisure in writing his experi ences. It has been found impossible to identify him with any historical John Mandeville.
The tomb of the reputed author of the 'Travels' was long shown at Liege, with an in scription to °Joannes de Mandeville, alias dic tus ad barbam." Important in this connection is the testimony of one Jean d'Outremeuse, in a des Histors,> now lost, to the effect that there died in Liege, in 1372, a physician named Jean de Bourgogne, Mit 3 la barbe," who declared himself on his death-bed to be "Jean de Mandeville, chevalier, Comte de Mont fort en Angleterre," his real name having been concealed because of a crime committed in Eng land. The veracity of D'Outremeuse is open to suspicion, but it has been thought that this Jean de Bourgogne may have been one John de Burgoyne, who was forced to leave England in 1322, and that he compiled the bor rowing the name of one John de Mandeville, who was concerned in the murder of Gaveston. At all events, Jean de Bourgogne was known in mediaeval times as the author of a treatise on the plague, which is bound up in one instance with a version of the It seems prob able, then, that this man, whatever his past history may have been, was the real author of the latter work, and that he preferred to con ceal his identity under the oseudonym of Mandeville.
Texts edited by Halliwell and by G. F. Warner (Roxburghe Club) ; articles in 'Dictionary National Biography' by Warner, and in Britannica' by Yule and Nicholson.