Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Sales catalogue 519: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.
9/292 page 3
![MANUSCRIPT OF MANDEVILLE’S TRAVELS WRITTEN IN THE MONASTERY OF GOOD CHILDREN AT LIEGE IN 1456. 1456 A.D. [4] MANDEVILLE (Sir John). Itinerarius a terra Anglie in partes [herosolimitanas et in ulteriores trans- marinas. Editus primo in lingua gallicana ab auctore suo domino Johanne de Mandeville milite anno incarnationis domini MCCC quinquagesimo quinto in civitate Leodiensi et Paulo post translatus in eadem civitate in hanc formam Latinum. Manuscript written in Latin by a Flemish scribe on 234 pages of paper, 22-24 lines to a page. Initials, paragraph-marks, initial-strokes and underlines supplied in red. 8vo, calf gilt, g.e. Liege, Monasterium Bonorum Puerorum, 31 March, 1456. (Sez Intusrration, Piate No. III). £250 Fifteenth-century manuscript of the important Latin version (known as the vulgate Latin text) of the famous travels of Mandeville. The earliest printed edition of this Latin text appeared about thirty years after this manuscript was written. 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 Bedouins, had been freely addressed by him on the corruption of contemporary Christendom, 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 Mudhaffar (who reigned in 1346-47); had been at Mount Sinai, and had visited the Holy Land with letters under the great geal of the Sultan, which gave him extraordinary facilities ; had been in Russia, Livonia, Cracow, Lithuania, ‘‘ en roialme daresten ’’ (? de 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 Lamary (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 an haunted valley, which he places near Millestorach (= Milles- -corah, i.e., Malasgird in Armenia); had been at many great feats of arms, but had been incapable of performing any himself; had been driven home against his will in](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31664374_0009.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
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