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The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500

Medieval Ethnographies
 THE EXPANSION OF LATIN EUROPE, 1000-1500

General Editors: James Muldoon and Felipe Fernández-Armesto

P art I

1 The Medieval Frontiers of Latin Christendom: Expansion, Contraction, Continuity

E dited by Jam es Muldoon and F elip e Fernández-Armesto

2 Internal Colonization in Medieval Europe

E dited by F elip e Fernández-Armesto and Jam es M uldoon

3 The North Atlantic Frontier of Medieval Europe: Vikings and Celts

E dited by Jam es M uldoon

4 The North-Eastern Frontiers of Medieval Europe: Scandinavia and the Baltic

(Provisional title)

5 The Medieval Latin Frontiers in Central Europe

(Provisional title)

6 The Expansion of Medieval Latin Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean

E dited by E lean or Congdon

7 The Expansion of Medieval Latin Europe in the Western Mediterranean

E dited by E lean or Congdon

8 The Expansion of Medieval Latin Europe in Spain and the Atlantic

E dited by E lean or Congdon

P a r t II

9 Medieval Ethnographies: European Perceptions of the World Beyond

E dited by Joan -P au Rubiés

10 Travelers, Intellectuals, and the World Beyond Medieval Europe

E dited by Jam es M uldoon

11 Religion and Expansion: The Medieval Missionary Impulse

E dited by Jam es F. Ryan

P a r t III

12 The Expansion of Orthodox Europe: Byzantium, the Balkans and Russia

E dited by Jonathan Shepard

13 The Mongol Empire and its Impact

(Provisional title)

14 Islamic Expansion in the Later Middle Ages

(Provisional title)
The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500

Volume 9

Medieval Ethnographies
European Perceptions of the World Beyond

edited by
Joan-Pau Rubiés
First published 2009 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X 14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition copyright © 2009 Taylor & Francis, and Introduction by Joan-Pau Rubiés. For copyright
of individual articles refer to the Acknowledgements.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and rec-
ording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identificati-
on and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN 9780754659556 (hbk)

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Medieval ethnographies : European perceptions of the world
beyond. - (The expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500)
1. Ethnology - Europe - History - To 1500 2. Travel,
Medieval 3. Ethnicity - Europe - History - To 1500
4. Europe - Intellectual life
I. Rubiés, Joan-Pau
305.8Ό094Ό902

US Library of Congress Control Number: 2008940507

THE EXPANSION OF LATIN EUROPE, 1000-1500 - VOL 9

 Contents

Acknowledgements vii

General Editor’s Preface ix

Introduction xiii

PART ONE - CONTEXTS AND GENRES

1 The Outer World in the European Middle Ages

Seymour Phillips 1

2 The Emergence of a Naturalistic and Ethnographic Paradigm in

Late Medieval Travel Writing
Joan-Pau Rubiés 43

3 Ethnographers in Search of an Audience

J.K. Hyde 65

PART TW O -M Y TH S

4 Continental Drift: Prester John’s Progress through the Indies

Bernard Hamilton 121

5 The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean: An Oneiric Horizon

Jacques Le Goff 155

6 Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East
Rudolf Wittkower 175

7 The Indian Tradition in Western Medieval Intellectual History

Thomas Hahn 209
vi CONTENTS

PART THREE - ENCOUNTERS

8 Gerald’s Ethnographic Achievement

Robert Bartlett 231

9 William of Rubruck in the Mongol Empire: Perception and Prejudices

Peter Jackson 273

10 Neolithic Meets Medieval: First Encounters in the Canary Islands

David Abulafia 291

11 Veni, vidi, vici\ Some Fifteenth-century Eyewitness Accounts of Travel in

the African Atlantic before 1492
Peter Russell 315

12 Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the Voyages of Columbus

Valerie I.J. Flint 329

PART FOUR - EXPLAINING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

13 The Image of the Barbarian in Medieval Europe

W.R. Jones 347

14 Perceptions of Hot Climate in Medieval Cosmography and Travel Literature

Irina Metzler 379

Index 417
 Acknowledgements

The chapters in this volume are taken from sources listed below, for which the editors and
publishers wish to thank their authors, original publishers or copyright holders for permission
to use their materials as follows:

Chapter 1: Seymour Phillips, ‘The outer world in the European Middle Ages’, in Stuart
B. Schwartz (ed.) Implicit understandings'. Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the
Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (1994): 23-63.

Chapter 2: Joan-Pau Rubiés, ‘The emergence of a naturalistic and ethnographic paradigm

in late medieval travel writing’, extracted from J. Eisner and J.P. Rubiés (eds.) Voyages and
Visions: Towards a Cultural History o f Travel (1999), ‘Introduction’, pp. 2 9 ^ 6 . Copyright ©
Reaktion Books 1999.

Chapter 3: J.K. Hyde, ‘Ethnographers in search of an audience’, in J.K. Hyde [ed. by Daniel
Waley], Literacy and its Uses. Studies on late medieval Italy (Manchester University Press:
1991), pp. 162-216.

Chapter 4: Bernard Hamilton, ‘Continental Drift: Prester John’s progress through the Indies’,
in C.F. Beckingham and Bernard Hamilton (eds.) Prester John, The Mongols and the Ten
Lost Tribes (Ashgate: 1996), pp. 237-69. Copyright © 1996 C.F. Beckingham and Bernard
Hamilton.

Chapter 5: Jacques Le Goff, ‘The Medieval West and the Indian Ocean: an Oneiric Horizon’,
in Jacques Le Goff, Time, work and culture in the Middle Ages, translated by A.Goldhammer,
(Chicago, 1980), pp. 189-200. Copyright © 1980 University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 6: Rudolf Wittkower, ‘Marco Polo and the pictorial tradition of the marvels of the
East’, Oriente Poliano (Rome, 1957): 155-72.

Chapter 7: Thomas Hahn, ‘The Indian tradition in western medieval intellectual history’,
Viator 9 (1978): 213-34. Copyright © 1978 University of California Press.

Chapter 8: Robert Bartlett, ‘Gerald’s ethnographic achievement’, from Gerald o f Wales,

1146-1223 (Oxford, 1982), ch. 6.
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

C hapter 9: Peter Jackson, ‘William of Rubruck in the Mongol empire: perception and
prejudices’, in Zweder von Martels ed., Travel Fact and Travel Fiction. Studies on fiction,
literary tradition, scholarly discovery and observation in travel writing (Brill: 1994): 54-71.
Copyright © 1994 Brill Academic Publishers.

C hapter 10: David Abulafia. ‘Neolithic meets medieval: first encounters in the Canary
Islands’, in D.Abulafia and Nora Berend (eds.) Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices
(Ashgate: 2002), pp. 255-78. Copyright © 2002 David Abulafia and Nora Berend.

C hapter 11: Peter Russell, 'Veni, vidi, vici: some fifteenth-century eyewitness accounts
of travel in the African Atlantic before 1492’, in Historical Research 66 (1993): 115-28.
Copyright © 1993 Institute of Historical Research.

C hapter 12: Valerie I.J. Flint, ‘Travel Fact and Travel Fiction in the voyages of Columbus’,
in Z.von Martels (ed.), Travel Fact and Travel Fiction. Studies on fiction, literary tradition,
scholarly discovery and observation in travel writing (Brill: 1994), pp. 94-110. Copyright ©
1994 Brill Academic Publishers.

C hapter 13: W.R. Jones, ‘The image of the barbarian in Medieval Europe’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History XIII (Cambridge, 1971): 3 7 6^07.

C hapter 14: Irina Metzler, ‘Perceptions of hot climate in medieval cosmography and travel
literature’, Reading Medieval Studies 23 (1997): 69-105.
 General Editors’ Preface

This series began with a suggestion that a volume dealing with medieval European expansion
would make an interesting prologue to the Expanding World: The European Impact on World
History 1450-1800 series that was already appearing. Several of the volumes in that series did
include articles dealing with aspects of the medieval background, but the medieval ‘expansion
of Europe’ - within and along the frontiers of Latin Christendom - lay outside the terms of
reference. So did an important part of the medieval prelude to the story of the ‘expanding
world’: the growth of neighboring cultures with which Latin Christendom collided.
Motives, practices, and tools characteristic of modem European expansion were creations
or developments of the Middle Ages. ‘The internal colonization of Europe’ was the basis of
subsequent overseas colonization. Along the edges of Latin Christendom, expanding societies
encountered Celts, Scandinavians, Slavs, and others who were organizing societies of their
own that could block or redirect European expansion, initiate cultural exchange, and exercise
varying degrees of influence on the way Europeans thought about themselves and the world.
As medieval Christian society expanded further, Europeans encountered other societies with
which they competed or cooperated.
The introductory volume for the entire series will deal with the expansion of European
society during the Middle Ages in terms of the frontier experience, setting the stage for the
entire series. Gradually or fitfully, with occasional reversals, between the late ninth and mid-
fourteenth centuries, the culture of Latin Christendom spread outwards in all directions from
the heartlands of western Europe. In spite of the contraction of Latin Christendom after the
Black Death, the check to the outward growth of the frontier, and the continuing expansion of
Islam, the basic motives for expansion remained, as did knowledge of institutional structures
employed in developing overseas trade and colonization.
Other volumes will deal with the expansion of Europe in geographical terms. The first
will examine the internal colonization of Europe that began around 1000 as the population
began to increase, previously unfarmed areas were transformed into arable land, and new
towns created. This period of growth provided impetus for acquiring new lands to settle and
for developing the techniques of colonization, techniques that were to have a long history.
Remaining volumes will deal with European expansion along specific frontiers. While
European expansion possessed some general qualities, each frontier had its own particular
characteristics.
The first external frontier to be considered is with the Muslim world. One volume devoted
to the Muslim frontier deals with the crusades and related efforts to block or reverse Muslim
X GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE-

expansion in the Mediterranean. The crusades were also early examples of colonization as
the crusaders established permanent settlements and a kind of European feudal government
in the reconquered territories occupied by an urban population of Christians, heretical and
schismatic, Jews, and Muslims.
The second volume dealing with Christian expansion along the frontier with the Muslim
world will examine the reconquista in the westward-facing parts of Spain and Portugal, a
process that not only led to the creation of the Spanish and Portuguese kingdoms, but also
to Christian occupation of parts of the African coast, exploration of the Atlantic, and the
discovery of several island chains. These efforts in turn led to Columbus’s voyages and to
Portuguese explorations that eventually linked the Atlantic to the trade routes of the Indian
Ocean.
Along other frontiers, European Christians expanded into lands occupied by a variety
of societies, often employing religious motives to justify their actions as they had done
in the crusades to regain the Holy Land. For example, expansion along the Celtic frontier
brought Anglo-Norman conquerors of England into contact with Scots, Welsh, and Irish,
all Christians yet, by continental standards, ‘uncivilized’. Expansion here meant not only
conquest but also, as in the case of Ireland, a responsibility for reforming the Church as
well. There was also the task of transforming the pastoral societies of the Celtic fringe into
agricultural societies that the intruders assumed to be the basis for fully civilized society. On
the northern, southern, and eastern shores of the Baltic where unevangelized Slavs and Baltic
peoples dwelled, and - further south - along the Danube and inland from the Dalmatian coast,
Christian Scandinavians, Germans, Slavs and Magyars faced a variety of intractable infidels
who deployed modest levels of material culture in terrain classifiable, according to the values
of the time, as savage.
English and Spanish medieval experience of dealing with the peoples encountered along
the frontier shaped initial responses to peoples encountered in the Americas. When they came
to the New World they came with perceptions about people who lived on the frontier and
with institutions for dealing with them. Europeans saw, or thought they saw, in the Americas
societies like those that they had encountered in the course of their medieval expansion so they
attempted apply lessons learned from that expansion to the Americas. Within two generations,
however, colonizers began to recognize that the Americas were different and that the lessons
learned in the course of medieval expansion were not necessarily directly applicable to the
New World.
The second set of volumes deals with two inter-related issues; first, the role of religion
in shaping the medieval response to the world beyond Europe and the perceptions of non-
Europeans that circulated throughout Europe. The Christian responsibility for preaching to all
mankind encouraged missionaries to move beyond the geographical frontiers of Christendom
to preach to infidels who lived along those frontiers. Early modem overseas expansion,
Catholic and Protestant, renewed this notion of mission on a large scale. A further volume
 GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE xi

in this category deals with European knowledge of the world beyond Europe. Much of this
knowledge came from missionaries, especially Franciscan friars, and from merchants such as
Marco Polo who had visited China, India, and the Islamic world. Missionaries and merchants
subsequently wrote down their observations about these worlds, providing their fellow
Europeans with the earliest first-hand information about the eastern world, information that
shaped the fifteenth-century search for a new route to Asia.
The third group of volumes focuses on the other expanding societies that Latin Christians
encountered in the course of expansion. These volumes demonstrate how expansion led to
interaction with other societies, some expanding, others contracting. The Byzantine Empire
ruled a Christian society that became increasingly estranged from the Latin West over
theological and cultural issues between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. To some
extent, the Byzantines found themselves caught between two expanding societies, the Latin
Christians of Europe and the Muslims who had emerged from Arabia in the seventh century,
eventually conquering a great deal of territory that the Byzantines once ruled. The crusades
that Europeans launched at the end of the eleventh century aimed at assisting in the defense of
the Byzantine Empire and at freeing the Holy Land from Muslim hands. As things turned out,
however, the crusaders were not interested in restoring the lands to Byzantine control. They
sought instead to carve out kingdoms for themselves at the expense of both the Muslims and
the Byzantines.
Muslim expansion was not only at the expense of the Byzantines, however. From the
mid-seventh century to the late seventeenth, Muslim expansion also had a serious impact
on Western European development. Christian armies encountered Muslim societies in Iberia
where a several-centuries long series of wars led to the creation of numerous small states.
At the other end of Europe, Muslim expansion through the Balkans from the fourteenth
century to the seventeenth century blocked European expansion eastward and pushed the
boundaries of Latin Christendom back as traditionally Christian kingdoms such as Hungary
fell to Turkish armies. European expansion into the African Atlantic began in the fifteenth
century partly in order to find a route to Asia that would outflank the Muslim-dominated
eastern Mediterranean.
Another society whose expansion impinged on Europe was the Mongol Empire that
Genghis Khan (1162-1227) created. On the one hand, the Mongols wrought a great deal of
havoc on the eastern frontiers of Christian Europe as well as on the Muslims in the Near East.
On the other hand, Mongol control of the routes between Europe and Asia made it possible for
European merchants and missionaries to travel back and forth, thus providing Europeans with
more accurate knowledge about the East than they had ever possessed before.
The collapse of the Mongol Empire in the fourteenth century made possible the creation
of new states out of the Mongol domain. From the perspective of Western Europe the most
important of these successor states was Moscow whose rulers embarked upon a policy of
expansion that eventually led to the creation of a Russian Empire. This empire not only
xii GENERAL EDITORS’ PREFACE-

succeeded to the Mongol hegemony in Central Asia, it also took over the Byzantine Emperor’s
role as leader and defender of Orthodox Christianity, identifying Moscow as the Third Rome
and heir to the Byzantine tradition. Subsequent expansion brought the Russians into conflict
with peoples of the Latin West, Islam, and China. Russian expansion eventually extended
through Siberia, across the Bering Strait to the North American mainland.
The expansion of Europe between 1000 and 1492 provided the foundation upon which
modem expansion built. This first stage of European expansion was a part of a larger process,
global age of expansion. This series traces the origins of a vital aspect of modernity back into
the Middle Ages and sets an early chapter of the rise of Europe in the context of the history
of the world.

James Muldoon and Felipe Fernández-Armesto

General Editors
 Introduction

In recent decades a traditional image of the European Middle Ages as a static period of
primitive economies, fragmented jurisdictions and obscurantist learning dominated by
religion has been qualified, when not actually discarded, through an awareness of how
economically creative, politically decisive and culturally dynamic the period between the
twelfth and the fifteenth centuries was - that is, what can be conventionally defined as the
Late Middle Ages. These were also four centuries marked by the territorial and maritime
expansion of Latin Christendom.1 One of the many legacies of this period that contributed to
the emergence of Western Europe as a leading civilization in world history was the growth of
empirical ethnographies. Of course, when compared with the growth of travel writing and the
historiography of colonial imperialism, and indeed knowledge of exotic societies, civilized
or savage, in the early-modern period, the medieval contribution seems indeed modest. Nor
is ethnography as obviously significant as sailing ships and firearms are for the history of
the global expansion of Europe. It is nevertheless the case that some of the key foundations
of the ethnographic genres that became so prominent after the sixteenth century were laid in
the late Middle Ages. Moreover, medieval ethnographic texts articulated European views of
other cultures no less decisively than would be the case after the Renaissance. The growing
attention paid by historians to these medieval ethnographies is therefore justified not only
for the important insights that their study offers into what has been called ‘the medieval
expansion of Europe’, but also for what they add to our understanding of the cultural roots of
the ‘western divergence’, by which early-modern Europe emerged as historically unique in a
global context.
For the purposes of this volume of selected essays, and for practical reasons, the rich
historiography concerning the encounters between Latin Christians, Islam and Judaism has
not been represented (although it should be found elsewhere in the same series).2 However,
it is important to emphasize that European perceptions of cultural diversity, always mediated
to some extent by religious considerations, encompassed at its most fundamental level a
confrontation with peoples of the two rival Biblical religions. Either as religious minorities
under Christian rule, or as political enemies in the case of the long Islamic frontier extending
from Spain to the Middle East, Jews and Muslims were always the primary others of European
Christians. A case could be made for including Oriental Christians - Greeks, Armenians,

1 J.R.S. Phillips, The m edieval Expansion o f Europe (Oxford, 1988); Robert Bartlett, The making o f
Europe. Conquest, colonization and cultural change 950-1350 (Harmondsworth, 1993).
2 Jim Muldoon is preparing a parallel volume, Travellers, Intellectuals, and the World Beyond
M edieval Europe which will include a number of articles concerned with the scholastic and missionary
traditions.
xiv INTRODUCTION

Nestorians, Jacobites and other churches considered ‘heretical’ - within a similar category. In
my discussion below, therefore, this dimension will be briefly considered.
Let us, as a starting point, acknowledge some non-European perspectives. Although the
importance of Arab and Persian geographical and historical literature has long been recognized,
including the genre of the rihla which described a form of extended pilgrimage within Islam,
there is still much to be learned from a systematic comparison of European and non-European
ethnographic genres. The use of travel accounts to describe other cultures was far from
uniquely European, and important traditions existed not only in Islam, but also in China, for
example under the early Ming, when both extensive maritime expeditions and land embassies
were professionally recorded. Ambassadorial reports can be particularly illuminating of the
empirical potential of those genres, because political envoys were under pressure to report
accurately about foreign courts and to find common grounds of understanding that transcended
religious definitions. When we consider for example accounts of early-fifteenth century
Persian embassies from Timurid Herat to China and India alongside the near-contemporary
account of a Castilian embassy to Timur’s court, or the earlier descriptions of the Mongols
produced by Franciscan envoys such as William of Rubruck, what seems most striking is the
universality of the capacity for descriptive empiricism. It is also pretty clear that ethnocentric
attitudes were prevalent in all maj or cultural traditions, although the particular modalities could
differ (hence Chinese travellers constructed their sense of cultural superiority on the basis of
Confucian ideals, with little reference to the religious categories that were so determinant for
both Christian and Muslim writers). Finally, it is also quite remarkable the extent to which
notions of civilization inspired by urban culture and its artistic products were analogous,
whilst not even the most religiously bigoted observers were unwilling to praise some foreign
customs as acceptable on the basis of a limited form of pragmatic relativism.
From this comparative perspective, what seems especially notable in the trajectory of
the Latin West is not simply the emergence of a growing sense of cultural confidence after
the twelfth century (at the same time that the central lands of Islam suffered from numerous
waves of conquest and devastation), but also the increasing importance of the genre of
empirical ethnographies within the cultural system. Yet, however influential, a book such as
Marco Polo’s was a rarity in medieval Europe, and it was only during the Renaissance that
the growing disparity with China and Islam in the development of the ethnographic genres
becomes entirely obvious. In other words, what is most distinctive of Europe is the genre’s
long-term ‘impact’ rather than its ‘empirical potential’, and, from a comparative perspective,
what needs emphasizing is the multiplication of original writings over time, their increased
circulation, and their more authoritative status as a ‘scientific’ discourse.3
Whilst cultural ethnocentrism and the religious justification for conquest and enslavement
were far from being something exclusive to Europe, it remains nevertheless important to note
the extent to which fundamentalist attitudes in the Latin Church inspired religious intolerance

3 I offer this argument more extensively in my ‘Late-medieval ambassadors and the practice of
cross-cultural encounters 1250-1450’, in Palmira Brummett (ed.) The ‘B o o k ’o f Travels: Genre, Ethnology,
Pilgrimage 1250-1700 (Leiden, 2009): 37-112.
 INTRODUCTION XV

and, more generally, negative attitudes towards other cultures. If at one end of the theological
spectrum Augustinian views encouraged the idea that there could be no salvation outside the
Church and that therefore deviations of belief and worship were devilish and idolatrous, the
more rationalist philosophies of the scholastic period also led to the assumption that the truth
of Christianity was not only universal, but also corresponded to the supposedly rational norms
of European civil life and morality. The distinction between faith and civil customs - between
religious law and secular law - was theoretically possible, for example in Thomas Aquinas’
theology, but not always consistently observed, especially when applied to societies perceived
to be barbarian (most obviously nomadic peoples).4
In fact, the role of reason in the theology of salvation remained notoriously tricky. Although
Christian writers, notably Augustine, had consistently emphasized the need for faith (‘seek to
believe that you may understand’), late medieval apologists and missionaries, especially the
Dominicans, also developed the assumption that natural science was fully compatible with
faith, and that the most rational peoples - those most civilized - should be especially prone to
accepting the truth of Christianity. As the early fourth-century Latin apologist Lactantius had
suggested in his Divine Institutes, it could be said that whilst human reason was not sufficient
to know divine truth, it nevertheless made it possible to create the antechamber to true wisdom
by proving to others, without recourse to contested scriptural authorities, that Christianity was
more rational than any other religion, whether idolatrous/polytheist or heretical/monotheist
(and of course atheism, the denial of Providence, was obviously untenable, as all the
mainstream ancient schools had already proved in their polemics against Epicureans).5 This
rationalizing impulse, revived after the twelfth century, gave Latin Christians a sense of cultural
superiority, a temptation even to seek to prove their religion through reason alone, as Ramon
Llull’s convoluted arguments with Jews, Muslims and gentiles exemplify. Latin confidence
was made possible by military strength and only truly shaken when Providence seemed to
turn decisively against Christians: as the Dominican Riccoldo da Montecroce revealed in
an agonized letter to God written in Baghdad following the fall of Acre, in practical terms
the only argument that truly mattered was not theological, but rather whose side was God
supporting, with miracles or simply through history: in the face of the prosperity of Islam ‘it
seems that you, God, have turned yourself into the executor of the Koran’.6

4 Aquinas’ strategy consisted of distinguishing the realm of rational norms (natural law) from the
realm of grace as expressed through direct divine revelation, which perfected, but did not contradict,
what human reason could discover in nature.
5 Hence the point of rational arguments was not to prove the faith, but rather to prove that the
doctrines of idolaters and heretics were inspired by demons and contrary to reason. The Jews, who had
the Law directly from God, were a different case, since their sin was a refusal to accept Christ - the
New Law - who had been born amongst them. So arguments with Jews were often conducted from
within scriptural authorities rather than philosophically. Whilst reason could be used to interpret the Old
Testament from a Christian perspective, its authority as Revelation could be assumed, and there was no
need for a rational defence of monotheism or monolatry.
6 ‘Epistolae quinque commentatorie de perditione Acconis 129Γ, ed. Reinhold Rôhricht, Archives
de Γ Orient Latin II (1884), 264-96.
xvi INTRODUCTION

Such doubts were rarely expressed. On the contrary, Europe’s success in the West (notably
in Spain) seemed to compensate for setbacks in the East, which in any case mainly affected
oriental Christians, and the assumption that the ‘Franks’ had both Providence and reason on
their side made Latin Christians less, rather than more, tolerant of other religions. Seymour
Phillips suggests in his essay ‘The outer world of the European Middle Ages’ (Chapter 1)
that the aggression expressed in European attitudes towards overseas peoples in the fifteenth
century to some extent represented a transfer of the previous development of institutionalized
persecuting attitudes within Christian society - towards heretics and Jews for example.7 As
a matter of fact, close scrutiny of various late medieval encounters reveals that pragmatic
considerations (involving trading opportunities with Muslims, for example, or the royal
taxation of Jews) often took precedence over any blanket intolerance of religious and cultural
diversity. However, there is also abundant evidence suggesting that ecclesiastical campaigns
imbued with the crusading ideology or with millenarian expectations could undermine existing
traditions of limited tolerance, providing a channel for the diversion of social frustrations
against religious minorities, and eventually creating the basis for a state policy in pursuit of
religious uniformity, as happened in Spain in the fifteenth century.
The primacy of religious considerations notwithstanding, the more recent historiography
has emphasized the growing importance of empirically-based ethnographies after the twelfth
century, in a manner that did not necessarily oppose the religious assumptions of Christian
superiority, but which on the other hand often went beyond a mere desire to justify expansionism
and brutality by condemning cultural diversity. Although the number of such texts was
limited, their significance grew, as shown by the wide circulation of key travel accounts such
as the books by Marco Polo and Sir John Mande ville. These two most remarkable texts in
reality were radically different from each other, both in conception and empirical validity, but,
interestingly, medieval contemporaries could not usually have been in a position to appreciate
this. This is symptomatic of a wider problem, namely the complexity of the late medieval
genre of travel writing. The sheer diversity of authorial intentions, target audiences, levels
of circulation and generic assumptions has led to various attempts to classify the material
according the sub-genres.8As I myself suggested in my ‘The emergence of a naturalistic and

7 It was also in the fifteenth century that the persecution of witches became systematic. On the rise
of persecuting attitudes see Bernard Cohn’s classic study Europe s inner demons. An enquiry inspired by
the great witch-hunt (London, 1975), emphasizing the decisive role of the growth of the irrational idea
of a secret sect devoted to devil worship, and R.I. Moore, The Form ation o f a persecuting Society. P ow er
and deviance in Western Europe (Oxford, 1987), whose key point is not that religious persecution was
peculiar to the Latin West (it was not), but rather that it grew in importance in the High Middle Ages,
becoming remarkably institutionalized. It should however be noted that Christianity, as a result of its
complex theology, has a historically unparalleled tendency to spawn sectarian interpretations, hence any
period marked by a hegemonic Church organization has tended towards the definition and persecution
of heresies.
8 Amongst various attempts to sort out the problem of genre in medieval travel writing see Jean
Richard, L es récits de voyage et de pèlerin age (Tumhout, 1981); Mary Campbell, The witness and the
other world. Exotic European travel writing 400-1600 (Ithaca and London, 1988); J.P. Rubiés, ‘Travel
writing as a genre: facts, fictions and the invention of a scientific discourse in early-modern Europe’,
 INTRODUCTION xvii

ethnographie paradigm in late medieval travel writing’ (Chapter 2), geographical literature,
ambassadorial reports, mission and pilgrimage all contributed to a pre-humanistic ethnographic
impulse, which in turn must be related to the growth of naturalistic and historical narrative
forms, rather than to any desire to challenge traditional religious ideologies.9
Particularly symptomatic was the empirical turn in traditional pilgrimage narratives, the
religious genre par excellence. The prevailing model until the fourteenth century consisted of
describing those places that could be linked specifically to scriptural or miraculous events,
making abstraction of the changing historical reality of the Holy Land. By contrast, the
continuous juxtaposition of passages depicting the cultivation of piety in sacred locations with
descriptions of historical peoples and contexts becomes apparent in a number of fourteenth-
century vernacular narratives, beginning with that produced by the Franciscan Friar Niccolô da
Poggibonsi in 1350, where a combination of practical advice and sheer curiosity leads to vivid
descriptions of savage Arabs, oriental Christians, exotic animals (for example an ostrich), the
loss of a faithful interpreter in the desert, or a friendly visit to a synagogue.10 Here perhaps
the most significant underlying issue was the growth of self-centred narratives of personal
encounters in the historical world, remarkable precisely because pilgrimage was traditionally
understood as seeking the opposite effect, a transcendent experience, and Christian fathers
such as Augustine had warned specifically against curious travel, the perfect metaphor for the
distracting enjoyment of the amenities of the journey that was man’s life on earth. However
problematic, the late medieval tendency towards personal and curious observation is too
general to be accidental, and was given its most influential expression in the fictional travels
of Sir John Mandeville, whose core identity was that of a pilgrim - modelled, in this case,

Journeys 2000 [now in Travellers and Cosm ographers. Studies in the History o f Early M odern Travel
and Ethnology (Aldershot, 2007), I]. See also Scott D. Westrem, B roader Horizons. A study o f Johan n es
Witte de H esse s Itinerarius and M edieval Travel Narratives (Cambridge Mass. 2001).
9 The essay ‘The emergence of a naturalistic and ethnographic paradigm’, included in this volume
at the suggestion of the series editor James Muldoon, is an extract from the ‘Introduction’ written
together with Jas Eisner to our edited collection Voyages and Visions. Towards Cultural History o f
Travel (London, 1999). I am grateful to Jas Eisner for his willingness to see this extract published
separately and, more generally, for his insightful classicist’s contribution to my thinking about the topic,
as reflected especially in the sections of the ‘Introduction’ dealing with ancient travel and pilgrimage.
See in this respect now also Jas Eisner and Ian Rutherford eds. Pilgrim age in G raeco-R om an & early
Christian antiquity. Seeing the Gods (Oxford, 2005).
10 Fra Niccolô da Poggibonsi, ‘Libro d’Oltramare’, in P ellegrini Scrittori. Viaggatori Toscani
del Trecento in Terrasanta, ed. by A. Lanza and M. Troncarelli (Firenze. 1990). Other examples of
pilgrims of this type are the Irish Franciscan Symon Semeonis (1324), the Florentine patricians Simone
Sigoli, Lionardo Frescobaldi and Giorgio Gucci (1384), and later in the fifteenth century the German
Dominican Felix Fabri (1480/1483). The narratives by friar Niccolô and others are discussed in Kenneth
Hyde’s excellent essay ‘Italian pilgrim literature in the late Middle Ages’, published posthumously in
his Literacy and its uses. Studies on late m edieval Italy, ed. by Daniel Waley (Manchester, 1993), with
an emphasis very similar to the one I offer here. See also Christian K. Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrim age:
the literature o f discovery in fourteenth-century England (Baltimore, 1976), and A. Gabroïs, L e pèlerin
occidentale en Terre sainte au Moyen Age (Paris, 1998).
xviii INTRODUCTION

upon the German Dominican William of Boldensele, although massively amplified with other
(often historical) materials.11
In order to appreciate fully what the rise of ethnography represents, we must consider the
extent to which cultural relations could be dealt-with non-ethnographically. The traditions of
crusade and chivalry are obvious examples. The crusading experience stimulated the growth
of a lay historiography which implied encounters with Muslims and oriental Christians, but
this was seldom represented with ethnographic accuracy. Muslims were often presented in
epic chansons as pagan idolaters who worshipped Muhammad (the genre served as crusading
propaganda).12Better informed historians of the crusades like Guibert of Nogent did not deny
the monotheism of Islam but treated it as a profane heresy by a false prophet that debased true
religion. Subsequent chroniclers of military expeditions in the lands of the Byzantine empire,
from Geoffreoy de Villehardouin to Ramon Muntaner, could be historically-minded narrators
of controversial events, but repeatedly fell back to literary stereotypes about treacherous
Greeks and enemy Turks without expressing any ethnographic curiosity.13 Chivalric literature,
in turn, was full of allegorical journeys and encounters with fabulous figures of ‘otherness’,
monstrous or simply marvellous, but it was only in a few proto-novels of the fifteenth-century,
such as the notable Tirant lo Blanc, that realist settings began to appear.
Most notably, the rich literature of theological disputations against Jews and Muslims,
whether intended for internal consumption or (more rarely) for actual engagement with
opponents, revealed very little attention to religious practices. As Norman Daniel argued in
his classic study Islam and the West, the making o f an image, the dominance of polemical
intentions meant that negative legends about Muhammad abounded, and in those cases when
knowledge of Islam was better grounded, its presentation was notably distorted to facilitate
apologetic aims.14 Even those authors of the late thirteenth century committed to missionary

11 On Mandeville see, amongst others, the classic study by Josephine W. Bennett, The rediscovery
o f Sir Joh n M andeville (New York, 1954), the decisive work by Christiane Deluz, L e livre de Jeh an
de M andeville: une G eographie au XlVè siècle (Louvain, 1988) and, more recently, the sophisticated
analysis by Iain Macleod Higgins, Writing East. The “Travels o f Sir Joh n M andeville (Philadelphia,
1997). The importance of Boldensele’s L iber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus (1336) as model for
Mandeville, who essentially ‘overwrote it’ on the basis of Jean le Long’s French version, is emphasized
by Higgins, pp. 64 ff. and also by Scott D. Westrem, who has publishd a similar kind of text by a
Dutch writer in his B roader Horizons. On the reception of Mandeville see also Rosemary Tzanaki,
M andeville's M edieval Audiences. A Study on the reception o f the Book o f Sir Joh n M andeville (1371-
1550) (Aldershot, 2003).
12 In a literary setting Muslims could nevertheless be more honourable than some Christians. A
notable example is the twelfth-century vernacular Castilian epic Poem o f the C id (written down c. 1207),
remarkable for its semi-historical setting, and where the hero is betrayed by his Castilian sons-in-law to
the horror of his Moorish feudatory ‘Avengalvón’ (Ibn Ghalbun).
13 For a recent overview of the complexity of the European engagement with the Levant see Michel
Balard, L es Latins en O rientXle-X Ve siècle (Paris, 2006).
14 Norman Daniel, Islam and the West. The making o f an Im age (Oxford, revised ed. 1993 [1st
ed. I960]). For a more recent discussion that seeks to go beyond Daniel’s shocked denunciation of
how distorted the Christian image of Islam was, in order to answer why this was the case, see also the
important synthesis by John Tolan, Saracens. Islam in the M edieval European Im agination (New York,
 INTRODUCTION xix

work through rational arguments in the frontier areas of the Mediterranean and Middle East,
such as William of Tripoli, Ramon Llull, or Riccoldo da Monte Croce, whose study of Arabic
and the Koran placed them in a position from which to construct a reasonably accurate image
of Islamic beliefs, were not particularly interested in representing Muslim practices, except
when they could be used to shame Christians into a more consistent moral behaviour.15 The
attitude of the Catalan (Majorcan) mystic and inventive apologist Ramon Llull is particularly
interesting, since his contact with Islam was sufficiently extensive for him to borrow literary
forms from Sufi poetry and even express admiration for the recitation of the Koran, yet at the
same time he believed that the Muslim intellectual elites were far too rational to seriously
accept the doctrines of Islam, and in his popular exposition of those doctrines he relied on the
stereotype of Muhammad the heretic and impostor. 16A similar dichotomy pertains to the rich
tradition of polemics with Jews: from the middle of the twelfth century, better knowledge of
Hebrew literature was framed within an apologetic context (aiming to prove Christianity from
rabbinic authorities) that did not lead to more tolerance, and often excluded any description
of actual Jewish life.17

2002). For the distorting role of apologetic aims in the parallel case of the Jews see the review-essay by
Harvey Hames, O n the Polemics of Polemic: Conceptions of Medieval Jewish-Christian Disputation’,
Studia Lulliana 37 (1997): 131-36.
15 For example, Riccoldo, P érégrination, 158: ‘We were surprised to find how a law of such
perfidy could produce works of such perfection. We will here report some of the works of perfection
of the Saracens, more for the confusion of Christians than to give praise to the Saracens’. In any case,
proponents of rational dialogue such as Llull were not necessarily unwilling to resort to crusade in
other circumstances. In this respect see Benjamin Kedar, Crusade and Mission. European approaches
towards the Muslims (Princeton, 1984), 159-203. For the general context of the missionary ideal of the
late thirteenth century see the classic discussion by Robert Burns S.J., ‘Christian-Islamic confrontation
in the West: the thirteenth-century dream of conversion’, American H istorical Review 76 (1971): 1386—
1434. The author of the De statu Saracenarum (1273), a work traditionally attributed to the Dominican
William of Tripoli, is perhaps the most exceptional in his positive attitudes towards Muslims (but not
Muhammad). This was only because he perceived them as much closer to Christianity than any other
writer. It was missionary ecumenism that justified a sympathetic portrayal.
16 John Tolan, “‘Saracen Philosophers secretly deride Islam’” , M edieval Encounters 8 (2002), 184—
208, emphasizes the growth of the idea that intelligent Muslims could not really believe in the Koran.
On Llull’s knowledge of Islam see Dominique Urvoy, P enser I Islam : les présu pposés islam iques de
l ART de Lulle (Paris, 1980), and Angel Cortabarria, ‘La connaissance de l’Islam chez Raymonde Lulle
et Raymond Martin, O.P.: parallèle’, C ahiers de Fanjeaux 22 (1987), 33-55. Where Urvoy insists on
the fragmentary nature of Llull’s knowledge of Islam, Cortabarria emphasizes that, compared with the
Dominican missionary and fellow Catalan Ramon Marti, author of the influential Pugio F id ei, Llull was
formally more inventive, allowing Muslim sources to influence his style (possibly because he sought to
address a wider audience, including laymen). However his description of Islam in the Doctrina P ueril,
a book written for children (1275), contains things such as the following: ‘The actions of Muhammad
were so villainous and obscene, and his words and actions so far from those that pertain to the holy life
of a profet, that the majority of those Saracens who are knowledgeable and of subtle intelligence and
high understanding do not believe that Muhammad was a prophet’.
17 The literature on attitudes to Jews is vast and growing. See especially Jeremy Cohen, The friars
and the Jew s: the evolution o f m edieval anti-Judaism (New York, 1982); Robert Chazan, D aggers o f
XX INTRODUCTION

The situation is notably different when analysing travel writers, whether ambassadors,
spies or even pilgrims. Whenever not trying to prove Christianity superior (and this was
seldom their main focus), these first-hand observers were often quite accurate ethnographers.
The emergence of this ethnographic impulse can not however be taken for granted: it was
not a default mode, but rather, one of the original creations of the late medieval period.
As we have seen, the evolution of pilgrimage narratives demonstrates that even a highly
conventionalized religious genre could be transformed from the abstract piety of the early
medieval centuries to the almost worldly curiosity that came to prevail after the thirteenth
century. Kenneth Hyde’s remarkable overview of the rise of ethnography in his provocatively
titled ‘Ethnographers in search of an audience’ (Chapter 3) offers a complex chronology of this
process, one that emphasizes the role of literate friars in the East in the thirteenth century, and
of literate merchants in the Atlantic in the fifteenth, with a long hiatus following the collapse
of the so-called pax Mongolica, when fresh ethnographies were rare. However, in his view,
writers were perhaps less decisive than audiences: it was the narrative skill of Rustichello da
Pisa that made Marco Polo’s description of the world - a geography rather than a travelogue
- possible and, indeed, more popular than the systematic ethnography of the Mongols by
John of Piano Carpini; even the latter had most impact through the summary in the clerical
encyclopaedia written by Vincent of Beauvais, which privileged the historical element over
the ethnographic.18 Hence, again, it was the life of genres that gave life to the expression of
individual creations and determined their impact.
The striking manner by which a writer like the Florentine Dominican Riccoldo da Monte
Croce could reveal deep contact with Islam during a stay in Baghdad in the early 1290s in
his narrative of pilgrimage (Itinerarius), and yet later deploy crude scholastic arguments in
order to misrepresent it as a confused, violent and permissive law that implicitly granted the
Christian gospels a higher status (a discourse developed in his Contra legem Sarracenorum of
c. 1300), is revealing of the fact that empirical knowledge was not the decisive issue, but rather,
how it was culturally constructed in specific contexts and for particular aims. In Riccoldo’s
case, a man who had transformed his pious pilgrimage into a bold preaching mission, the
sudden collapse of the remaining Latin enclaves in the Holy Land created a crisis of faith that

faith : Thirteenth-century Christian missionizing and Jew ish response (Berkeley, 1989); Anna Sapir
Abulafia, Christians and Jew s in the twelfth-century R enaissance (London, 1995); Jeremy Cohen,
Living letters o f the law: ideas o f the Jew in M edieval Christianity (Berkeley, 1999). Also, in French,
Gilbert Dahan, L es intellectuels chrétiens et les ju ifs au moyen âge (Paris, 1990), with a more positive
emphasis on cases where Christian theologians showed respect for Jews as expert interpreters of the
Hebrew Bible. Ramon Llull is again a peculiar case because, largely working outside the scholasticism
of the mendicant orders, he tried to develop an apologetic method that would connect to the intellectual
trends of his religious opponents, even subjecting the key Christian tenets of the Incarnation and the
Trinity to rational proof (not an orthodox move). For a fascinating exploration of his knowledge of
Jewish Kabbalah see Harvey Hames, The art o f Conversion. Christianity & K abbalah in the thirteenth
century (Leiden, 2000).
18 On the remarkably faithful editorial practices of Vincent of Beauvais see also Gregory Guzman,
‘The encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais and his Mongol extracts from John of Piano Carpini and Simon
of Saint-Quentin’, Speculum 49 (1974): 287-307.
 INTRODUCTION xxi

could only be met with a literary effort, a fresh attempt to believe in order to understand, as
he explained in his extraordinary prayers in the form of letters addressed to God.19 The next
step was a violent apology for Christian core beliefs undertaken upon his return to Florence,
an effort probably more important for buttressing his own Latin Christian identity than for its
potential effects amongst oriental audiences. The apparent virtues of Muslims, such as their
piety, could only be interpreted as a warning to Christians, and their worldly success against
Christians as a test of faith. Riccoldo’s polemic was built upon previous texts found in a
Florentine library (notably the 12th century Liber denudationis by a Spanish Muslim convert
to Christianity), rather than inspired by his own rather disturbing Eastern experiences.20
Perhaps we can generalize by saying that the more elaborate the theology of religious
difference, the weaker the ethnographic impulse: it was the encounter with pagans or ‘gentiles’,
rather than with Muslims, Jews, or oriental Christians, that generated the most detailed
empirical descriptions of exotic customs, rituals and beliefs. When dealing with ‘gentiles’
the religious categories were vaguer, the polemical tradition almost non-existent, and there
was little opportunity to limit the argument to the interpretation of a contested tradition of
scriptural authority, pitting authentic against non-authentic text, or, when books were held
in common reverence, the correct interpretation against the incorrect one. When after the
thirteenth century Buddhists, Brahmins and shamans were actually encountered, they had
little in common with the (purely) philosophical gentiles that a few Christian apologists such
as Abelard, Llull or Aquinas had been debating against. Peter Jackson’s analysis of William of
Rubruck’s account of the Mongols amply demonstrates that missionaries could, when acting
also as ambassadors, become accurate ethnographers, whilst Kenneth Hyde emphasizes the
careful planning that went into John of Piano Carpini’s Ystoria Mongalorum, behind the
apparent simplicity of its ecclesiastical Latin: his was a ‘literary and intellectual achievement
of a high order’. However, it is also clear that the fact that the Mongols were a novel pagan
presence helps explain the curiosity of these Franciscan envoys for recording their customs.
Similarly, Riccoldo da Monte Croce was fascinated by the savage customs of Turcomans,
Tartars and Kurds whom he encountered in his journey from the Holy Land to Tabriz, but said
little about oriental Christians and Jews, other than to oppose their heretical views. It is also
true that the Dominican friar’s personal narrative was less vivid than William of Rubruck’s:
next to the historical legends picked up in his travels and the theological condemnations found

19 Riccoldo, ‘Epistolae’. The remarkable depth of this crisis of faith led the friar to openly question
why God had not spared the many good Christians of Acre, including many saintly Dominicans, in order
to punish a few impious ones (reversing his mercy towards the people of Sodom, who would have been
spared provided only ten just men could be found). The only reply he received was that God’s power, as
shown in the Sacred Scriptures, was arbitrary.
20 For a discussion of the sources of Riccoldo’s Contra legem Sarracenorum with an edition of the
text see J.M. Mérigoux, ‘L’ouvrage d’un frère prêcheur en Orient a la fin du XHIe siècle’ in M emorie
Dom inicane 17 (1986): 1-144. On the L iber denudationis see Thomas Burman, Religious p olem ic and
the intellectual history o f the M ozarabs (Leiden, 1994).
xxii INTRODUCTION

in the libraries of the preaching order, the account of what Riccoldo actually experienced
pales into insignificance.21
There can be no doubt that the Mongol conquests had a decisive impact upon European
ethnographic genres after the thirteenth century. The fact that the ‘Tartars’ were classified as
gentiles was of course relevant, but the competition to convert them to Roman Christianity
was also stimulated by the huge geopolitical consequences of their sudden emergence in
Eastern Europe and the Middle East (and the complex relationship between diplomatic and
religious roles remains one of the key issues for interpreting the mendicant embassies). Theirs
was a vast and aggressive empire which, for many decades, made it possible for people, goods
and cultural influences to travel relatively easily across the whole Eurasian mainland, from
the distant countries of the Franks in the barbarian west to the richest prize of all, Cathay
in northern China. For Europeans the ‘Tartars’, most notorious for their cruelty, obviously
represented an immediate threat, but perhaps more significant, in the long term they were also
a potential ally against a more immediate common enemy, in particular after they successfully
settled in Persia, where the Ilkhans made their capital in Tabriz. The contemporary collapse of
the crusading states of Outremer together with the steady retreat of the Greek empire, under
the combined pressures of the Mamluk restoration in Palestine and the advance of the Turks in
Anatolia, created a structure of diplomatic exchanges and missionary dreams (mainly led by
the papacy) that would outlast the conversion of the Ilkhans to Islam, casting a shadow until
the seventeenth century.
This geo-strategic re-alignment, whilst causing immediate destruction to both Eastern
Christianity and many Islamic lands, also coincided with a growth in military power, economic
sophistication and cultural confidence in the Latin West. It gave European writers of the late
thirteenth century a strategic vision of world geography that a variety of practical genres, lay
and religious, were ready to articulate. European descriptions of Asia all the way to India
and China, such as Marco Polo’s rather exceptional Divisament dou monde (c.1298), became
suddenly possible, as did a substantial amount of missionary accounts, from the early efforts
by John of Piano Carpini and William of Rubruck amongst the Mongols of Central Asia
to, a few decades later, the travels in India and China of Odoric of Pordenone and John of
Marignolli, also Franciscan friars.22 The detailed accounts of the Mongols written by John of

21 This priority of the legendary leads to some incongruities, such as when after describing how
the Kurds were known to be murderers, robbers sand betrayers, he notes that they actually treated him
with great hospitality at a time of great need! See Riccoldo, Pérégrination en Terre Sainte et au p roch e
orient. Lettres dur la chute de Saint Je a n d'Acre [Latin text with facing translation], ed. by René Kappler
(Paris, 1997), 120.
22 A few Dominicans also reached India, for example Jordanus Catalani of Severac, but they tended
to be more active in Persia and Armenia. After 1318 a formal division of missionary areas had been
agreed, with the Franciscans in charge of the Mongol lands all the way to Cathay, and the Dominicans
responsible for Iran and India. On these various missions to the East and European relations with the
Mongols see Jean Richard, La papau té et les missions catholiques en Orient au Moyen Age (XIIIe— XVe
siècles), 2nd ed. (Rome, 1998). On some obscure episodes, such as the identification of Ghinggis Khan
with Prester John in the ‘Relation of David’, or the account of the Mongols by Simon de Saint-Quentin,
see also his Au delà de la P erse et de L Arménie. L ’Orient Latin et la découverte de lA sie intérieure
 INTRODUCTION xxiii

Piano Carpini and Simon of Saint Quentin were incorporated with astonishing rapidity into
the Speculum Historiale of the French Dominican Vincent of Beauvais (c.1254), perhaps
the most important encyclopaedic synthesis of the Late Middle Ages. The crusading ideal
generated more direct ethnography and attention to oriental sources during its messy retreat
than at the time of its apparent initial success, that is, when it coincided with an expansion
of scientific and narrative genres. It is symptomatic that in this context, in 1307 the exiled
Armenian prince Hayton (Hetoum) would preface his appeal to a joint Latin-Mongol crusade
that would restore the fortunes of the Christian kingdom of Lesser Armenia (Cilicia) with a
substantial account of the peoples of the East from Syria to Cathay, as well as a history of the
Muslim dynasties and mostly of the ‘Tartars’. Much of this was based on personal observation
and stories gathered at the Mongol courts in places such as the cosmopolitan city of Tabriz.23
(It was also in Tabriz that Rashid ad-Din was then preparing his universal history, written in
Persian for his Mongol patrons, with chapters on India, Cathay and ‘the Franks’.)
As the fourteenth century advanced, direct contacts became more difficult, but in Europe
the new ethnography of the East continued to be copied and translated, summarized and
propagated by chroniclers and encyclopaedic writers, and assembled in vernacular collections
such as that created in French by the Benedictine monk Jean le Long of Ypres in 1351, who
in this way made it possible for someone, perhaps himself, to write the popular travels of
John Mande ville (Mande ville’s account of the East is primarily taken from Pordenone’s
vivid travelogue). Fresh ethnographic materials were also integrated in a remarkably
systematic fashion into revolutionary mappamundi\ one such was the Catalan Atlas prepared
by the Majorcan Jew Abraham Cresques in the 1370s, who complemented the navigational
empiricism of the portulan charts with the legends of Marco Polo’s account of the far East to
inaugurate a tradition of world maps influential until the expeditions of Columbus.
Few of these writings were entirely empirical, since all combined personal observations
with hearsay, and much of the latter tended towards emphasizing the marvellous. As Peter
Jackson notes in his essay ‘William of Rubruck in the Mongol empire: perception and
prejudices’ (Chapter 9), even the most personal of narratives contained a great deal of
inaccuracy and misunderstanding, manifested for example in the friar’s difficulties making
sense of Buddhism or distinguishing it from Manichaeism. The importance of the legend
of Prester John also testifies to the continued impact of the ideological wishful thinking that

(Turnhout, 2005). In English J.R.S. Phillips, The M edieval Expansion o f E urope, chapter 5, offers a
good summary.
23 The F lo r des estoires de la terre d ’Orient was dictated to Nicholas Faulcon at Poitires (where
Hayton stayed as a Premonstratensian monk) at the request of pope Clement V, and then was translated
into Latin. It deserves more attention from scholars, not only because of its pervasive influence as a
source of geographical knowledge, but also as prime example of the cultural mediation exercised by
oriental Christians connected to the crusader estates. Prince Hayton was in exile as part of the factional
struggle in Cilician Armenia - he was a member of the pro-Latin faction that collaborated with the
House of Lusignan in Cyprus. It is likely that the crusading treaty was written separately. One must
still consult the edition and study by C. Kohler in R ecueil des Historiens des croisades. Documents
Arméniens, II (Paris, 1906).
xxiv INTRODUCTION

underlay relations with the East: the myth of the Christian priest-king who would join forces
with the Latin Christians for a restoration of the crusade, originally inspired by the Qara-
Khitai’s decisive defeat of the Seljuq Sultan in 1141, was little more than a primitive version
of the later idea that the Mongols would convert to Roman Catholicism and crush the Muslim
powers of the Middle East. Although Rubruck could assert that reports about the conversion
of various Mongol khans to Christianity had been exaggerated by self-interested Nestorian
Christians (whom he considered profoundly ignorant in any case), in Europe the legend of the
Christian ally not only persisted, but indeed was revived in the most extraordinary sequence
of transformations, to eventually inspire the Portuguese in their Atlantic explorations of the
fifteenth century. In his illuminating essay ‘Continental drift: Prester John’s progress through
the Indies’ (Chapter 4), Bernard Hamilton shows how, from the twelfth century, and in a
variety of crusading contexts, fabricated letters and obscure prophecies were conveniently
attached to specific potential allies as situations arose, with very little concern for geographical
rigour.24 By 1221 Ghinggis Khan himself had become Prester John as one ‘King David’, his
recent destruction of the Christian Georgian army notwithstanding. A few decades later a
better informed William of Rubruck suggested that Prester John should rather be related to the
Nestorian Turkic Khans of Central Asia belonging to the Naiman and the Kerait tribes. The
fact that Marco Polo eventually recounted the defeat and utter subjection to Ghinggis Khan
of the leader to the Keraits Toghril (Wang Khan), whom he openly identified with Prester
John, and mentioned that his descendant George was a Christian and a vassal of Kubilai,
did not prevent, but rather encouraged, the final migration of the myth to Christian Ethiopia,
where, throughout the 14th century, the Solomonic dynasty was able to expand southwards
and then initiate a diplomatic exchange with Latin powers such as the kings of Aragon.
Paradoxically, the Ethiopian Negus was a monophysite, that is, he entertained a very different
kind of Christological doctrine, one quite opposite to the Nestorian. What this reveals is not
utter disregard for geography, let alone theology, but rather the process of accommodation to
new empirical realities of a powerful myth that retained its political relevance. Hence there
was not a pure religious mythology of the Prester John, but rather a continuous tension and
compromise between ideological dream and historical reality.
A similar tension between traditional ideas based on literary stereotypes and new realities
affected images of the peoples of India, although in this case the literary tradition was
particularly strong due to the existence of various classical sources, whilst actual contacts
were remarkably limited until Marco Polo late in the thirteenth century, and even then never
as intense as with Armenia, Persia and Central Asia. This combination produced a remarkable
persistence of fabulous themes, what in his essay (Chapter 5) Jacques Le Goff calls ‘an
oneiric horizon’, which he relates specifically to the ‘mediocre’ collection of Hellenistic-
Latin geographical sources available to Europeans, including the Ptolemaic idea of a closed
sea, so confusing for fifteenth-century cartographers. India, a vast expanse of ill-defined and
often shifting contours, became for centuries the land of the marvellous, both in positive and

24 See also Charles F. Beckingham, ‘The achievements of Prester John’ [1966], reprinted in his
Betw een Islam and Christendom (London, 1983).
 INTRODUCTION XXV

in negative terms. It was the place where paradise, but also the monstrous races described by
Pliny, could be located: a land where nature experimented with freaks (the point that marvels
represented extreme nature rather than anti-nature was important to Christian theologians
like Augustine) Jacques le Goff, venturing into a kind of psychoanalysis of the collective
medieval mentality, interprets it also as a space of liberation, an anti-Mediterranean, a space
opposed to rational civilization. Whilst it can be argued - as I have done elsewhere - that
most of the marvellous elements described by actual travellers such as Marco Polo derived
from oriental hearsay rather than expressing a collective mentality shaped by the weight of
centuries of literary and iconographie influences, there is no denying that no sober description
of India was produced in Europe until the humanist Poggio Bracciolini subjected the Venetian
traveller Nicolô Conti to a rigorous interview in fifteenth-century Florence.25
One area in which the literary tradition of antiquity exercised a great influence was in the
emphasis on marvels and monsters, which medieval authors, following the classical precedent
(for example Pliny and Solinus), tended to locate at the extremes of the world. It is important to
distinguish the general idea of the marvellous, which simply referred to what is extraordinary
and worthy of note, for example peculiar products, animals and customs, from the more
specific theme of the monstrous races, which could suggest a transgression from the laws
of nature, and had been given an utterly ethnocentric religious interpretation by Augustine
(God could never have erred, hence he may have created monstrous races in the East so that
Christians be less questioning of occasional monsters in their midst!). There was nevertheless
an easy overlap between the two themes, since the most marvellous was often that which
seemed unnatural. Whilst empirical travellers such as Marco Polo were understood to tell
marvellous stories, included the tale of the dog-headed people from the Andaman and Nicobar
islands (also reported in Arab sources), they were also prone to dismiss other tales as fabulous.
By contrast, the less empirical accounts were those most reliant on previous literature and
therefore more prone to seek to confirm or elaborate existing mythical representations, within
a pure logic of self-representation.
The relative rarity of detailed empirical ethnographies such as those produced by the
Franciscan missionaries or by lay travellers such as Marco Polo not only made it difficult to
establish their superior credibility, but also ensured that there was no linear progression from
fabulous accounts to sober ones. An example of this is the Mirabilia Descripta by Jordanus
Catalani, a Dominican engaged in serious missionary work in fourteenth-century India (he
became Bishop of Quilon in 1329), but apparently more interested in witnessing exotic
marvels than in producing a balanced and informed assessment of the lie of the land. What
he sought was not pure fantasy, but rather to record the novel and the extraordinary of, in his

25 Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology, chapter 3. Le Goff must also be corrected in relation to Conti’s
saying about the three eyes of the world - the ‘Indians’ had two, the Franks one, and the other nations
were blind. These ‘Indians’, as I have argued, are in fact the Cathayans (Chinese). See Rubiés, ‘Late
medieval ambassadors’, 40-55.
xxvi INTRODUCTION

own expression, ‘another world’.26 He did so in a rather disorderly way, failing to transmit a
clear sense of the geography of India.27 Hence, amongst descriptions of mangoes and coconut
trees he repeated (obviously from hearsay) the popular story of the dog-headed islanders,
revived the traditional idea that one could find many precious stones with special ‘virtues’,
and emphasized that the darker people were, the more attractive they were considered. He
also offered an account of the sati sacrifice, a description of idolatrous rites, and a confused
catalogue of gentile sects, but never a description of a city or a court.
This emphasis on the marvellous, supported by a mixture of observations and hearsay,
was not peculiar to the European image of India. Gerald of Wales began his description
of Ireland (Topograhia Hibernica) of c. 1188 by noting that the West no less than the East
produces wonders of nature (it was indeed his aim to restore the balance by giving an account
of the western marvels). He went on to distinguish the truly miraculous from those things
that were marvellous in themselves, that is, placed by nature in the appropriate climates, and
which he subsequently sought to rationalize (these included stories of fish with golden teeth,
men who were half oxen, or bearded women).28 Assuming of course a religious vision by
which miracles were entirely possible, the obvious question about marvels was not accuracy,
but rather interpretation. Marvels, in other words, were an expression of divine power, but
because (as declared by Augustine) the created world was the greatest marvel of all, admiring
it was, more than anything, an exercise in religious piety, one which led from a consideration
of rare wonders in exotic islands to an increased appreciation of the wonder that is nature in its
everyday cycles. Admittedly, Gerald also had a political agenda: the wonders of Ireland could
testify to the worth of the colonizing project of Henry II of England, since they proved that the
land, with its mild and healthy climate, had a great deal of natural potential, in opposition to
the more famous East, were all the elements, from extreme heat to lions and, most especially,
poisons, invited death.
One interesting problem is interpreting historically the psychology of belief associated
with the medieval emphasis on marvels. If we assume that human rationality can operate
within a variety of cultural parameters, it is quite possible to make sense of the evidence of
belief in the marvellous without relying on the facile assumption of a collective mentality
that would be particularly credulous and lead, for example, to interpretations of ‘the other’
as monstrous. This is not to deny the existence of cultural stereotypes, but these were not

26 Jourdain Catalani de Sévérac, M irabilia Descripta. L es M erveilles de l ’A sie, ed. Henri Cordier
(Paris, 1925). There is a new edition with commentary Une im age de I ’orient au X IV siècle. L es M irabilia
D escripta de Jordan C aíala de Sévérac, ed. Chrisitne Gadrat (Paris, 2005). Jordanus’s rather unromantic
conclusion was that Christendom was the best land in the world, and with the best customs, if only
Christians kept their law properly.
27 There were different traditions concerning the division of ‘India’ into three parts. Jordanus’s
account of ‘The Third India’, namely East Africa, was particularly fantastic, because entirely based on
hearsay.
28 Bartlett, G erald o f Wales, chapter 4. On this point see also Caroline Walker Bynum, M etam orphosis
and identity (New York, 2001). As has often been noted, in later editions of the Topographia H ibernia
Gerald elaborated his interpretations with additional erudition and a great deal of moralizing.
 INTRODUCTION xxvii

fixed.29 Ethnographie sources, in particular, reveal a variety of attitudes that often reflect
the assumptions of different kinds of observers and audiences. Rudolf Wittkower’s classic
essay ‘Marco Polo and the pictorial tradition of the marvels of the East’ (Chapter 6) offers
an interesting example of this. Taking as starting point the tendency of audiences to interpret
a novel account of diverse peoples such as Marco Polo in relation to familiar categories,
he examines in particular the iconography of some an important manuscript of the early
fifteenth-century - part of a large collection of travel accounts dealing with the East - and
shows that to a large extent the artist departed from Marco Polo’s text. The simpler point
is that the artist did not have the first-hand experience of the traveller and had to rely on
the conventions of traditional imagery. The more subtle one is that a series of manuscripts
combining literary material (such as the romance of Alexander) with descriptions by actual
pilgrims and travellers could be unified by this type of iconography of the marvellous. An
aristocratic audience reading accounts of the East originally composed a century earlier, and
without access to fresh sources of information, need not have been particularly credulous in
order to accept this invitation to believe in traditional marvels without discriminating between
factual and legendary history. However, this should not imply a culturally-determined lack of
rationality. Attitudes could change easily if and when new literary and visual sources were
made available in sufficient numbers - something that happened in the sixteenth century.
In the meanwhile, the marvellous became most significant when supporting myths,
positive or negative. The duality of positive and negative marvels found at the extreme
of the inhabited world represented by India is also apparent in relation to its most famous
inhabitants, the Gymnosophists, soon identified with the Brahmans. Thomas Hahn’s ‘The
Indian tradition in Western medieval intellectual history’ (Chapter 7) examines the indirect
influence of the classical accounts of these Indian sages first written by Greek travellers who
accompanied Alexander, later summarized by Hellenistic historians and geographers (such
as Arrian and Plutarch), and finally elaborated in the multifarious Romance o f Alexander
of Pseudo-Callisthenes (c.300), with the various apocryphal writings derived from it.30 The
Alexander romance was eventually translated from Greek into Latin (most famously by Leo
of Naples in the tenth century) and various European vernaculars.31 What is interesting here is

29 On the theme of monsters see John Friedman’s classic study, The monstrous races in m edieval
art and thought (Cambridge Mass 1981); Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order
o f Nature, 1150-1750 (New York, 1998). More recently, Rhonda Knight, Saracens, demons a d Jew s:
making monsters in m edieval art (Princeton, 2003) and two interdisciplinary collections: Timothy Jones
and David Sprunger (eds.), Marvels, monsters and miracles. Studies in the m edieval and early-m odern
imaginations (Kalamazoo, 2002), and Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills (eds.), The monstrous M iddle
Ages (Cardiff, 2003).
30 Of particular importance for the Christianization of the Brahmans as ascetic contemplators, as
noted by Hahn, was the work of Palladius of Hellenopolis (in Bythinia), a fifth-century bishop keen
on the idea of the salvation of gentiles, as revealed in his De vita bragmanorum narratio, which led to
accusations of Origenism. Interestingly, a similarly liberal interpretation had been offered by Philo the
Jew. For a modern English edition with a very useful introduction see Richard Stoneman ed. Legends o f
Alexander the Great (London, 1994).
31 See also George Cary, The M edieval A lexander (Cambridge, 1956).
xxviii INTRODUCTION

the medieval ambivalence towards the Brahmans as emblematic figures of natural virtue, that
is, as rational philosophers. Taking as a starting point the historical encounter of Alexander the
Great with the naked philosophers of India, in particular two, Dandamis and Calanus, there
emerged an apocryphal exchange of letters between the heroic but morally flawed king and an
ascetic philosopher - the Collatio Alexandro cum Dindimo - which adapted the mainly Cynic
and Stoic themes of the ancient Greek sources to the Christianized image of a virtuous gentile
observing natural law, an image which was still relevant in the fourteenth century, when
John Mandeville came to describe India. However, there also existed an explicit patristic
rejection of the idea of pagan virtue, best exemplified by Augustine, which tended to dominate
in ecclesiastical culture, the efforts of rationalist philosophers like Abelard to proclaim the
sanctity of Dindimus notwithstanding. Thomas Hahn charts how Dindimus survived in the
Latin West by becoming ever more Christian, and indeed a vehicle for attacks on idolatry.
However, he does not consider the impact of late medieval ethnographies. When empirically
described in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by Latin travellers, whether lay writers
like Marco Polo or missionary friars such as John of Montecorvino, Odoric of Pordenone and
Jordanus Catalani, the Brahmans of India quickly emerged as the most notorious of gentile
idolaters, those who worshipped the ox for their god and even (Odoric of Pordenone noted)
sanctified themselves with οχ-dung. But the idea of a virtuous gentile did not entirely die
out in the face of what seemed like manifest idolatry. For Marco Polo it was Buddha, not the
Brahmans, who deserved praise: had he been a Christian, he would have been a saint.
If in the case of distant India the weight of literary tradition overwhelmed fresh
observations for many centuries, the active frontiers of Christendom North and West made
possible a number of encounters with ‘gentiles’ that found expression in the rise of empirical
ethnographies. Whilst the case of the Mongols, already reviewed, was crucial in the thirteenth
century, a much earlier missionary interaction had taken place with Celts and Slavs, and as
early as the eleventh century the ecclesiastical historian Adam of Bremen offered an empirical
description of Scandinavian and Baltic peoples, a tradition continued by Helmold of Bosau in
the following century when he recorded in some detail the idolatry of pagan Slavs. However,
the greatest ethnography of the twelfth-century Renaissance concerned the Irish and the
Welsh, who although Christian, were perceived as culturally alien by Anglo-Norman writers
like Gerald of Wales. As Robert Bartlett emphasizes in Chapter 8, the interest of Gerald’s
Descriptio Kambriae of 1194 is not simply its empiricism, but also the complexity of the
personality of a well-read writer living in a frontier society and moved by local piety, who,
for example, displayed his mixed heritage by writing both about how the Welsh should
be conquered, and how they should resist. Possibly the greatest achievement of Gerald’s
description of Wales was that it explained why the geography and economy of the land made
liberty the supreme value of its people, but prevented them from coming together to defend
it. In that context, moral polarities between virtue and vice (obviously inevitable in Gerald’s
ecclesiastical culture) did not lead to a simple moral condemnation of the cultural ‘other’.
By contrast, the earlier Topograhia Hibernica is more one-sided, as it was written clearly to
reflect the point of view of the Anglo-Norman invaders. It was also a work that made many
 Another Random Document on
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made us feel sad, most of the house servants came in crying, and said they
were willing to do for us, but were afraid. Of course we would not put them
in any danger, so sent them all off. We sat down to breakfast to a plate of
hominy and cold corn bread that had been cooked the day before for one of
our soldiers. The very night before we had sat down to an elaborate supper;
—such are the fortunes of war! We cleaned up the house and cooked dinner,
looking all the time for our friends for such we considered the officers. Just
as our dinner was put on the table a party rode up; we were so glad to see
them that we all went in the piazza. The officer came forward and bowed
very politely. Pa then told him how we had been treated the night before
and asked what guarantee we would have against such treatment in the
future.
Capt. Hurlbut who was in command of the party said that the black
soldiers had no authority to come without an officer and if found, they
would be punished. He said that Gen’l. Potter would be along soon and we
might get a protection from him, but afterwards he said that he would write
a paper which might do us good, and certainly would do no harm. I do not
remember the words; but, the sense of it was, that we had very wisely
remained at home, while many had flocked to other parts of the
Confederacy. He said that everything had already been taken from us, and
he would advise that we would not be further molested. He then spoke to
the negroes, told them they were free and could either go away or stay at
home, but if they remained on the place, they must work, for no one could
live without working. He told them they would be better off if they stayed
at home.
Soon after Col. Hartwell and staff arrived. They all agreed in saying that
the marauders would be punished and the Colonel signed the paper. One of
his staff got quite familiar; played with Aunt Ria’s baby, little Maria, and
ended by kissing her. We laugh and tell the baby she has caught a Yankee
beau, and she always laughs and seems to enjoy the joke. In a very short
time Gen’l Potter and his staff came up in the piazza. Then the army
commenced passing through the yard, about three regiments of infantry, one
white and two colored passed through, besides artillery and cavalry. Each
one stopped (sic) and the men ran in every direction after poultry. They
marched the colored regiments right by the piazza; I suppose as an insult to
us. The negroes were collected in the yard and cheered them on, Hennie[86]
and Sister[87] asked the General if he could not leave us a guard that night,
but, he said there was no use; his army did not straggle, and that he could
not leave a guard at every place he passed. The General did not make a
favorable impression on us;[88] he was very short in his manner, but his
staff were very polite. One of them told us to try the General again.
You must not be too surprised at our staying out in the piazza with so
many men, for there were a great many of us to keep company, and then we
had never seen such a sight in our lives before. The last of the army had not
left the yard before we saw the General returning; he said he had
determined to take up his headquarters here that night. We were all of
course, delighted for we could not have been better guarded. They had the
parlor for their sitting room, and one chamber for the General. The wagon
train camped just in front of the house, and two regiments in the field in
front. There was a sentinel at the front and one at the back door all night.
The camp fires looked very pretty at night. Did we ever imagine that
Pooshee would be headquarters for a Yankee army? About two hundred
head of poultry and a great many sheep were killed; the negroes’ own did
not escape! We recognized one of the prisoners (that our scouts had here the
first of the week) driving a cart, and Lieut. Bright and his men were
prisoners that night in the wash room, one of them asked to be allowed to
speak to some of the girls who were at the back door; he seemed to be a
gentleman.
During the course of the next day soldiers were continually passing
through. Our protection paper was of great use, for we were not molested
again and from that day to this 9th of March we have been in comparative
quiet.
Wantoot[89] house has been burned, also seven unoccupied houses in
Pineville. Some of the residents there were shamefully treated, even their
clothes taken from them. Uncle Rene was among the fortunate ones; he
only had a ham stolen from his house but all of his poultry. They went into
the house at Woodboo, though a Mrs. Williams was living there to protect
it, opened every drawer and box in the house; dressed themselves in Uncle
Thomas’s and the boys’ new clothes, leaving their old ones behind.
At Northampton they were told by the negroes that a good many things
were hid in the house, so made a thorough search. They actually threatened
to hang Mr. Jervey, and had the rope brought. For some time they had been
told (that treasure?) had been buried. The people about here would not have
suffered near as much if it had not been for these negroes; in every case
they have told where things have been hidden and they did most of the
stealing. The negroes here have behaved worse than any I have heard of yet.
Daddy Sandy is as faithful as ever. He is sorry that the Yankees have
been here. George still comes about the house, but does not do much.
Daddy Billy, who we all thought so much of, has not come in since they
were made free. He pretends to be hurt because Hennie told him he could
go if he wanted to. Hennie’s maid Annette has taken herself off. Kate comes
in regularly to attend in the bed rooms night and morning.
We have to do our own cooking now, and you don’t know how nicely we
do it. * * * * * We take it by turns to cook dinner in the pantry, two going
together every day. * * * I have not touched my needle for a week; would
you believe that? The field negroes are in a dreadful state; they will not
work, but either roam the country, or sit in their houses. At first they all said
they were going, but have changed their minds now. Pa has a plan to
propose to them by which they are to pay Grand Pa so much for the hire of
the land and houses; but they will not come up to hear it. I do not see how
we are to live in this country without any rule or regulation. We are afraid
now to walk outside of the gate. * * * * *
We have just heard a report that Charlie Porcher has been taken prisoner
in a fight near Aiken, and fear it is true. Do let me tell you a smart trick of
Cephas, Grand Pa’s carpenter! It is worthy of the Yankees. Before (the
minds of the) Moorfield negroes had been poisoned, he went there and told
the servant Robert that Aunt Ria had sent him for a cart, five turkeys and a
sheep. He then came here at night, took up his wife Adela and traveled off
to Charleston. One of Aunt Ria’s negroes who had always been sick got one
mule from Moorfield, another mule and carriage from some other place,
went to Pinopolis and took all of Mr. Stevens’s[90] books. The next day he
went for the piano. He told some of the negroes that he had been playing on
it already. The negroes are in the most lawless and demoralized state
imaginable. If this is what the Yankees intended they have made their work
complete. We have to keep everything under lock and key, and can call
nothing our own now.
Grand Pa seems completely broken down, tho’ he tries to keep up. It
must be too hard for one of his age to have everything so changed from
what he has been accustomed to all of his life.
The day that the Yankees left here, George brought in an envelope which
he found in the prison (the wash-house). It was directed to “Miss Carrie
Cribbs,” Tuscaloosa, Ala. On the back was a Confederate stamp, and inside
a blank sheet of paper folded. At first we did not think anything of it; but
the idea soon struck Aunt Bet that it was left here with an object, which was
that we should write and let the young lady know what had become of him.
We heard afterward that one of the prisoners’ name was “Cribbs,” so that
settled all doubts we had on the subject. We will send the letter off the first
opportunity we hear of, tho’ I can’t say when that will be, for we are
entirely cut off from the world and almost entirely from neighborhood
news.
March 10. We received notes from White Hall and Sarrazins and also a
letter from Alice Palmer, quite a treat. The White Hall negroes behaved
shamefully; they rushed into the house; tore down the curtains, carried off
bedding, blankets and trunks, and are grumbling now that they have not
enough. We hear that one man asked Cousin Marianne[91] to step out and
take a dance, that they were on equality now.
March 11. Uncle Rene dined here to-day. It was really refreshing to see
some one out of the house. He says there is a report that Sherman has been
defeated with heavy loss, and is going down to Georgetown. I fear it is too
good to be true. Uncle Rene also brought the news that fighting was going
on at Blue Hole, Uncle Charles Snowden’s place. I suppose it can only be a
skirmish. How composedly we can be talking of fighting in our very midst!
One item of news, which I must not forget to tell you, is that Newport
has taken the cooking, and we are all ladies again.
March 13th. Dr Waring[92] came in to-day and told us the particulars of
the affair at Blue Hole. On Thursday four Yankee negroes, with a good
many plantation negroes, armed, went to Moorfield. There they found a
quantity of wine. A good many men joined them from there and Cedar
Grove, mounted on anything they could find, and in a drunken state they all
rode up the Parish. When they reached Blue Hole, Charlie Snowden, who
was there on a visit, went off and informed our scouts. They killed two or
three of the negroes, and took several prisoners, which I do not think they
kept long. After they left, the negro soldiers made the negroes move
everything out of the house, and the family had to go into the kitchen. The
next day our scouts came up again to assist Aunt Harrie[93] in recovering
her things; but, she begged them to go away; that they had been the cause of
her trouble, so they left in not at all a good humor, and we have heard
nothing more. I hope young Charlie Snowden has succeeded in getting out
of the way. Several of the people about here have put up the white flag,
because the Yankees told them it would be a sign that they had already been
visited. Our scouts did not like it; they said it looked as if the country had
submitted, so they have all been taken down. I am so glad we never had one
up.
March 14th. We all went to Northampton this morning to pay a visit;
quite an era in our own monotonous lives. Pa rode on horse-back and we
closed up the ranks on foot.
March 15th. Aunt Ria left us this morning to stay a while at Woodlawn.
She went in the buggy with the baby and Maum Mary; the two boys
followed in the cart.
March 16th. Dr. White[94] dined here to-day; he had just crossed the
river. He had not seen a paper for some time, so, of course, could not tell us
much news. Sherman had not been defeated and was avoiding a battle.
March 17th. Drs. White and Waring paid visits here to-day. We are not as
much cut off as we expected at first. Dr. Waring told us he heard that the
oath of allegiance was to be offered to every man in the country. This is the
worst news we have heard of for some time. Pa and Harry will try and get
out of the way, but Grand Pa will be compelled to take it.
March 18th. Mr. Cain and Anna Maria were here to-day; the old
gentleman seems to feel his loss very much.
March 20th. * * * * This morning Pa went to Woodlawn to try and make
arrangements for carrying us all to Aiken. He has succeeded in hiring three
mules, and the present plan is that we are to start on Wednesday in a wagon,
—Rather a novel style of making the trip! We are all anxious now to go, but
hate so much leaving Grand Pa, and the rest of the family, particularly in
Grand Pa’s state of health.
March 21st. We heard rumors to-day of the enemy landing on the banks
of the Santee, and coming this way in great force which made Pa decide not
to go on Wednesday. * * * * *
 March 22nd. We heard to-day from Nina[95] and Cousin James Wilson. *
* * Nina writes on the 16th of March from Winnsboro. She had met the
enemy there and had not lost much. * * * a good many houses were burned
in Winnsboro, also the Episcopal Church, and they were kept in constant
fear. Cousin James and family lost everything by fire in Columbia—They
had to spend one night in the woods with Nana’s[96] baby only ten days old.
How much some people have suffered. We have every cause to be thankful,
for we have suffered very little in comparison to others.
We also heard to-day of several battles in which we had been victorious;
that France had recognized the Confederacy and the United States had
declared war against Mexico,—if it could only be true! We cannot help
feeling hopeful anyhow.
Dr. Waring mentioned that a few Yankees had landed, but had gone back
to their gun boats, so the Aiken cavalcade is to go off in the morning.
March 23rd. The Club House[97] came down with a crash this evening,
or rather the frame, for the Yankees had nearly stripped it of boards and the
negroes finished it.
March 24th. The caravan started for Aiken to-day. The negroes are
behaving a great deal better now on most of the plantations; they have
commenced working again, and most of them that went to town have come
back, which I think will have a very good effect on the others. Our scouts
have done a great deal of good in making the negroes afraid to go out.
March 25th. Harbin house was burned yesterday about 2:00 o’clock by
accident we hear. We have heard no particulars, or what has become of the
family. Mr. Myers (the overseer) returned home to-day to join the scouts.
He reports that Sherman has been defeated in N. C. and four thousand
prisoners taken. He was perfectly surprised to see the state of things here, so
different from what they are on the river. We feel very anxious about Henry,
[98] for Mr. Myers left him a week ago in Chester quite sick. He was in a
cotton house as he could not get private lodgings. We saw a Charleston
Courier of 21st of March. The Yankees claim the victories of all the battles
that have been fought lately, and say the Rebels are nearly done up! That
remains to be proved.
March 26th. This day will long be remembered by the people of
Pineville. The Regulators[99] had just returned from Mt. Pleasant with a
supply of arms and ammunition—Last night they sent to several of the
gentlemen and told them they would hang them the next day, but our scouts
surprised them this morning and 27 were killed, eleven right off, and the
others in the course of the day. One man was taken who told where their
ammunition was hidden, and then he was dispatched. Several made their
escape in the woods but the ring-leaders were killed;—15 were killed from
Capt. Gourdin’s place. Our force was 56 men; that of the negroes was not
known, though supposed to be less. We hear that Col. Ferguson[100] is on
his way with 1,500 men, and Major Jenkins with six companies. They will
soon put things straight again.
March 30th. * * * Mr. Stevens arrived to-day. He does not appear to
think anything of the behavior of his flock; but I know he must feel
mortified and disappointed. He will remain and preach for us as long as it is
safe for him to do so. To-day has been a regular mail day. Mr. Stevens
brought letters from Nina, Mrs. Sams and Auntie,[101] * * * one from Uncle
Charlie Snowden saying he had taken possession of our farm, and also
mentioning that some of Wheeler’s men had broken into the house, taken
all of the carpets, blankets and provisions. * * * This evening Hennie
received a long note from Cousin Marianne Porcher; she mentioned that
Hardee had been repulsed, but that after that Johnston had defeated
Sherman taking 4,000 prisoners.
Press Smith was wounded in both legs, and his brother Porcher in the
head; both were doing well; Ravenel Macbeth was wounded and a prisoner.
We have heard nothing of our other friends. Cousin Marianne says she
heard from negroes that the entire Barker family had taken the oath of
allegiance and were preparing to go to the city. We cannot blame them for
we do not know how they were situated. Dr. Motte had refused the oath up
here, but was carried to Charleston, and there he was made to take it. Mr.
Holmes refused to take it and is now a prisoner. I do not know how true all
this is, but we must take it for what it is worth. I am very thankful that Pa
has gotten away and that we do not live on Cooper river. * * *
March 31st. The Northampton people paid a visit here to-day. Willie
Jervey is at home for a short time. We heard a report to-day that Charleston
was blockaded by fifty French vessels and that the Yankees were preparing
to evacuate the place. It came from a man about here who had gone down to
the Gunboat to take the oath of allegiance.
 April 1st. The negroes’ freedom was brought to a close to-day. During
the morning a party of our scouts rode up and asked if Grand Pa wished
them to do anything for him. Grand Pa told them that one of his negroes
had been seen with a gun but had said that it belonged to one of Uncle
Rene’s men who had gone to town, so the scouts went off. We were very
uneasy when we saw them coming, fearing that they might be Yankees.
About dinner time another party came up, Edward Dennis, Mr. McTureous
and several others. They requested the negroes be called up, and told them
they were not free, but slaves, and would be until they died; that the
Yankees had no right to free them, and that they were to go to work as they
had always done with a driver;[102] that they would be here every two or
three days to see that they worked, and the first one caught out without a
ticket would be killed. Then they demanded guns from two of them and said
they were to be forthcoming. Poor deluded creatures! Their friends the
Yankees have done them more harm than good; this day month their
freedom was proclaimed. One report to-day is that the white Union soldiers
in Savannah united with the citizens and massacred 4,000 blacks on account
of their outrageous behavior. Another is that the Gun Boats have left the
Santee and the one on Cooper river has gone lower down. About dark after
we had shut up the house we heard a loud rap at the front door, and much to
our surprise it proved to be your father (Mr. Heyward). He had come all the
way from Aiken on horseback to carry Aunt Bet back.
April 2nd. We have been permitted the privilege of again meeting at
church to offer our thanks to God for his manifold mercies to us during this
terrible time. Nearly every one in the Parish succeeded in getting there,
mules supplying the places of all horses that had been taken. It was very
pleasant to meet our friends, whom we had not seen for six weeks.
April 4th. Aunt Bet started to-day for Aiken with a carriage, two wagons,
one cart, one donkey cart, two cows and an outrider,—quite a cavalcade!
We heard today that two of the ring leaders from Pineville went to the
Gunboat and told how they had been treated, whereupon the officers had
them put in irons and sent to Charleston, and told them, if they had only
known it, they would have sent a company to help the white men. We
received numerous letters from Aiken this morning by the return wagons. I
am sorry to say that Wheeler’s men have done us more damage than the
Yankees. I did not mind it at first when I thought they had only taken things
they needed, but I do blame them very much for their wanton destruction of
property that they ought to protect. It is a shame and they ought to be
exposed.
April 6th. The scouts were here again to-day under Lieut. Pettus.[103]
Charlie Snowden has joined them. Hennie got them to go to Wampee and
send her maid Anette home.
April 8th. We have had another visit to-day from the Yankees. Before
breakfast we saw smoke in the direction of Somerset, and the negroes told
us they had heard a drum and fife in the night. We thought it was
imagination until a servant from Wantoot told us that the Yankees had burnt
Somerset house and were coming on. Soon after we saw them coming
through the field, and in a very short time the house was full of black
Yankees. I remained in the hall to see what they would take there, and to
keep a watch on our room door. The first one that came into the room asked
for fire arms. I told him they had all been taken. The next one asked for
silver. I had no idea of showing him, so told him I was not the lady of the
house. He made no reply but went on looking. A number then came in, and
the silver was soon found and carried off; 40 small pieces of table silver and
soup ladle; these, and one candle stick were the only things taken from the
hall. Grand Pa lost all of his clothes that he had out. A box was broken
open, some sheets and table cloths taken, the rest flung over the floor
interspersed with broken eggs. The safe door was broken open and the ham
taken. Several other rooms were entered and things taken; but, I am
thankful to say our room was left untouched. All of the horses were taken.
Gen’l Hartwell took good care not to come up until the darkies had left. He
told his Captain to go and see if he could get the silver and one horse back,
which, of course, we knew he did not mean him to do. The object of their
visit was to catch the scouts. They said we had brought all of this on
ourselves for encouraging the scouts.
Uncle Rene and Uncle William have both been taken prisoners and we
hear, are to be carried to Charleston. They took the latter to get information
from him,—so they say, but we think they took him because he had
entertained the scouts. Uncle Rene had to put himself under the protection
of the General as there was a conspiracy detected among the black troops to
come back that night and kill him. The Yankees went to Mexico this
evening and I suppose will visit all the places up there.
 April 10th. Of course there was no service yesterday. Dr. Waring paid a
visit and told us that Mr. Stevens was still in the Parish, but keeping close.
This morning several of the negro men came to Grand Pa and asked to be
allowed to stay here and work; they would do anything he told them. The
Yankees told them to go with them, but they said they did not want to go.
Two of the boys from here have joined the (U. S.?) Army.
April 11th. * * * * Cousin Mazyck Porcher[104] has been taken prisoner.
Mexico house and all the out buildings have been burned. Last accounts of
the enemy they were at Eutaw Springs.
April 12th. Uncle Rene and Uncle Wm. returned home to-day. We were
too thankful to hear of their release. They were carried as far as Eutaw, and
then told to “Go Home.”
Woodlawn, April 14th. Uncle Rene drove Sister home, and I came back
here to take her place. Uncle Rene and Uncle William had a most dreadful
experience on the ride from Pineville to Mexico with the Army. At one time
they were guarded by only one black soldier, and they could hear others all
around trying to bribe their guard to give them up to be killed; but the
guard, though a darky, was above bribing.
Pooshee, April 20th. I returned here to-day quite unexpectedly. Pa came
down last night and went over for me. We are to leave on Monday. We hear
the most exaggerated accounts of things here. To-day’s reports are that
Lee’s Army, 32,000, has surrendered to Grant, and all the men paroled not
to fight again during the war. The other report is that Sumterville and
Summerton have both been burnt to the ground; of course we do not believe
either of them.
April 21st. We hear to-day that there has been a fight on the river, and
two regiments of blacks under Potter completely cut up.
April 22nd. Today’s news is very cheering; it is that Lincoln and Seward
have both been assassinated, and that there is to be an Armistice.
(Here the diary-letter ends without signature.)
 REMINISCENCES OF MRS. MARY RHODES (WARING)
HENAGAN

———
(Written in December, 1917, to be Read at a Meeting of The
Girls of the Sixties, Columbia, S. C.)
———
The evacuation of Charleston, crossing of our soldiers over the Santee
river, burning the bridge behind them, left the lower part of the State in the
power of the Yankees.
My home was in this deserted region. We knew that our enemies were all
around and had visited in no kind manner many of the neighboring
plantations, but Chelsea, our plantation and winter home, seemed to be
exempted. We learned afterward that this was due to the devotion of our
slaves.
At last the Yankees did come. Our home, a big old colonial house built in
1714, was packed with refugees run from the coast from their homes earlier
in the war. My mother directed each of us to go to my grandmother’s room
as soon as we saw the Yankees coming, and meet them in a body there. My
grandmother had passed her eightieth mile-stone and was old for her years.
As day after day passed and no Yankees came we felt more at ease. On
one particular day in February, 1865, the young folks were sitting in a room
removed from the main body of the house, one reading aloud and the others
knitting, when my sister-in-law put her head in at the door and exclaimed,
“Girls, the Yankees.” There was a rush for the house and my grandmother’s
room. Just as we reached it the house was surrounded by an excited crowd
of men calling for the Confederate soldier they had seen enter the house.
There was no soldier there and they were so informed, but they insisted
there was one for they had seen him. Their officers had some trouble in
keeping them from searching the house. One officer stood at the front door
with my father, who was the physician of the neighborhood, Dr. Morton
Waring, and the other at the back door with my mother and her sister. Just
then the excitement was relieved by one of our young negro men walking
up with a military cap on.
 There was no soldier with us just then, only a boy not yet in service.
Our young horses were gone, for the negro boys had taken them all into
the swamp a half mile away as soon as the Yankees were in sight. Some of
the soldiers were anxious to take my father’s horses that he used for his
practice, but this Captain Hulbert, one of their officers, would not permit,
telling his men they might need the services of a doctor and he could not get
to them if his horses were gone.
Captain Hulbert told my father that his negroes had represented him as
such a kind friend to them that the general in command had directed him
not to enter his house or permit any outrages, only to free the negroes, as
they thought they were slaves until each plantation was visited and the
negroes told they were free.
But the soldiers were not satisfied and meant to have something if
possible, so they surrounded the smoke house and told one of our negro
men to go up and throw out the meat. Of course he obeyed. As my father
and Captain Hulbert walked quickly up one of our negroes stepped up to the
captain and said, “Please don’t let your men take our meat. This belongs to
us negroes.” This was not strictly true as the meat was for us all, but it had
the desired effect. The meat was left.
At this time when we were so anxious and worried our negroes showed
themselves true friends by concealing our valuables. Different ones would
come at night and offer to take anything we would entrust to them and hide
it for us. In this way many valuables were entrusted to them which were
taken care of and returned after all was safe, in every case under cover of
night. Our silver of course was buried by members of the family.
During this same period we were surprised one day by seeing a buggy
coming up with two men in it, one wrapped in a blanket, the other, his son,
driving. These were Dr. Peter Snowden and his son Charlie. When they
drew up in front of the house and asked for my mother she went to them at
once and was accosted by one of these gentlemen, both of whom she knew
well. He was one of the scouts and had been wounded and taken refuge at
the next plantation, but the Yankees hearing of his hiding place were in
pursuit of him, so he came to see if my father could help him. My father
was not at home, but my mother never hesitated. She made a bed in a small
room where my father had hidden much corn and other provisions, and
placed a large press in front of the door which it entirely concealed. In this
store room our scout was cared for until he was able to go further. While
arrangements were being made for him my grandmother called my mother
to her and said, “Anne, do you know what you are doing, you have many
helpless ones in your care and this piece of kindness may cost you your
home?” My mother replied, “It is my duty to protect him. I will do it. God
will do the rest.” When my father reached home he commended her action.
If the Yankees ever knew the wounded scout was with us they certainly
made no sign indicating they possessed such knowledge.
There were skirmishes about in our neighborhood between the northern
troops passing through on their way to Columbia, Camden and other points,
and our scouts. These were men sent back to protect the helpless ones left
behind. They used a kind of guerilla warfare, but sometimes they had a real
open skirmish. One of these was on a plantation near our home and my
father was sent for to dress the wound of one soldier, I think a Yankee,
another having been killed in the same fight. The mistress[105] of this
plantation had two young nieces with her for companionship. Her husband,
of course, was away, and her children very small. The older of these girls
carried a pistol in her pocket for protection. One day the pistol discharged
its contents into her thigh. Only a flesh wound resulted, but it alarmed the
family very much. My father was called and after making her comfortable
he persuaded her aunt to let him take her home with him. She improved
rapidly and was soon able to walk around. Then she thought best to return
to her aunt. We had not seen or heard of any Yankees in the neighborhood
for several days so my father thought we might venture the trip of two miles
in our carriage. My sister and I went with her. As we were crossing the
Santee canal about a mile from our house we saw some soldiers on the
bridge. Tom, our coachman, drove quietly on, but as soon as we crossed we
were halted and our carriage surrounded by blue coats who were rather
inquisitive. We had driven right up to a long line of marching Yankees. A
portion of Hartwell’s army on its way to the up country. Some of them
recognized our friend, having seen her at Harbin, the home of her aunt, so
accosted her with “Halloo Leize and Sallie. There are Leize and Sallie.”
They had mistaken me for her sister. My sister in a quiet manner and voice
asked to speak to their commanding officer. This caused them to stand back
while one went for the officer. After a while, which seemed much longer
than it really was, the officer (I believe a colonel) rode up and asked her
business. She told him we were on our way to a neighboring plantation to
make a friendly visit and return, and asked his protection for the trip. He
told her he was obliged to detain us where we were for a time, but we
should be protected. That as he had to march on with his command he
would leave us in charge of a guard. This he did at once, so that in a very
short time our guards were the only soldiers in sight except one that was
sent back with a dispatch to the Major of the fifty-fifth. While he was
waiting for the major and his men to come up he sat at the root of a large
pine and played beautiful music on a very sweet flute that he had stolen
from one of the plantations. I had heard that flute so often, it belonged to
Rene Jervey. As we were circumstanced it was better to assume a
friendliness of manner with our guard who was a very polite Canadian
named Alfred Brett. He said he was only fighting for his pay, that he did not
care which side whipped.
After listening to his yarns for some hours my sister asked him why he
was detaining us and how long he meant to keep us there. He replied “I
must keep you until General Hartwell’s division passes. He has many
regiments of colored troops and if you should meet them I could not answer
for the consequences, they are coming by the same road you are going.” My
sister said “But if you will allow us, we will return straight home by the
same road we came.” He agreed to this and told Tom to hitch up, which
Tom did with the sorry horse he gave in place of our beautiful one he stole.
He did not wish the other so let us keep him. This certainly gave us a pair of
wretchedly matched horses, one large gray and the other a small red hack
that loped all the time in harness that was so large it could scarcely be kept
on.
While guarding us Mr. Brett had an eye to self. He asked Tom very
particularly about one of my father’s sulky horses, a very fine iron gray
named “Beauregard,” where he was kept and so on, and said he wanted
him. Tom suspecting mischief consulted with our foreman as soon as we
reached home and between them they determined to save the horse, and lost
no time about it. They took my father into their confidence.
Not long after we reached home and before the excitement caused by our
story had subsided my father came driving slowly home behind an old
frame of bones in a much bruised horse hide. They had met him at
Woodlawn plantation where he had gone professionally and taken his horse.
Zeleka would not stand haltered, so we hoped she would come home. Sure
enough that night after she had eaten her oats and all was quiet she slipped
her halter and started homeward. She had gone quite a long way when one
of our scouts caught her. He used her and took care of her until the troubles
were over, then returned her to my father.
Early the morning after our capture the whole plantation was thrown into
wild excitement. During the night the stable door was unhinged and
Beauregard taken, the news spreading through the neighborhood. The
doctor could not visit his patients, both of his horses having been taken.
Other persons lost their horses too, so he could only go as best he could to
the urgent cases. Then the weary weeks of waiting, we could hear nothing
of my brother. All we knew was he was with General Young’s brigade
wherever that was. Some of the men from St. John’s Parish had gotten
home but none had seen or heard of him. The war was over. The army
disbanded, and we were still waiting. One memorable day about the middle
of April we were gathered in the parlor trying to be cheerful and busying
ourselves with mending when our butler stepped into the room and said in a
most joyous voice “Mars John.” O, such a rush for the front door where my
mother ahead of the rest had her soldier boy in her arms. It was a happy
household that night that gathered around the family altar. Some time after
this we were again gathered in the parlor. This time chattering of how we
were going to make our little serve for a great deal, when we were attracted
by the neighing of a horse at the fence near by and looking up saw
Beauregard. What a welcome he received. Tom thought it safe for him to
come home so released him from his hiding place in the swamp.
 No. 280.

REPORT OF BV’T. BRIG. GEN. ALFRED S. HARTWELL,

FIFTY-FIFTH MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY,
OF OPERATIONS,
APRIL 5-15.
(From pp. 1042-1043, ‘War of Rebln Official Records,’ &c. Series
I: Vol. XLVII, Part 1. “Campaign of the Carolinas, etc.")
———
Headquarters Provisional Brigade.
No. 8 Meeting St., Charleston, S. C., Ap’l. 15, 1865.
Captain: The following is respectfully submitted as the report of the
expedition to the Santee River under my command:
In pursuance of orders received from Brig. Gen. John P. Hatch, I caused,
on the 5th of April, the Fifty-fourth New York Veteran Volunteers and Fifty-
fifth Massachusetts Volunteers to cross from James Island and assemble
with a section of the Third New York Artillery at the Four Mile Tavern on
the State Road. Starting early on the morning of the 6th inst., I reached
Goose Creek at nightfall, and went into bivouac eighteen miles from this
city. From this point I sent back for the surplus ammunition. On information
from a contraband that there were from thirty to forty Rebel cavalry at a
place called Dean Hall I sent, at 5:00 P.M. two companies to attempt to
surprise this party. During the night I was notified that these two companies
had been misled by the guide, and were awaiting orders near the Twenty-
Five Mile House on the State Road. April 7 at 7:00 A.M. I started to Mr.
Cain’s, near Black Oak, Santee Canal, some twenty-two miles, sending a
detachment to Biggin’s Bridge, who rejoined the column at night, together
with the two companies from the Twenty-Five Mile House. Thirty cavalry
were in my front having gone from Dean Hall around my flank. I sent two
companies to deploy and surround the house in which they were reported to
be, and surprise them. The enemy, however, got notice of our approach in
season to escape, leaving several blankets and guns, and their supper ready
cooked. Mr. Cain had several sons in the Rebel army; he had entertained
those who had just gone, and had recently given them a grand dinner; his
barn accidentally, or by some unknown incendiary, was burned.
Marched at 7:00 A.M. on the 8th of April, and halted at noon in Pineville
for dinner. Reached Mexico at nightfall, and went into bivouac there.
Distance marched, about twenty miles.
The people in Pineville implored our protection from the negroes, who
were arming themselves and threatening the lives of their masters. Mr. Reno
(sic) Ravenel requested me to take him with me to save his life. The
negroes flocked in from all sides.
At Mexico I found that Mr. Mazyck Porcher had made his house the
headquarters of the Rebels in the vicinity. While I was on his grounds his
property was protected, but was burned to the ground immediately on my
leaving, I think, by his field hands.
April 9, started for Eutaw Creek, thirteen miles distant. Some
skirmishing occurred; but dispersed the enemy with a few shells.
From Eutaw Creek I sent two companies to Nelson’s Ferry, who sent me
word at night that General Potter had gone up the Santee in transports the
day before, and that they had burned forty or fifty bales of cotton that night
on the opposite shore. During the night a contraband reported to me that
General Potter had encountered the enemy at Manningsville, and had had a
skirmish there. He was advancing, however, to Sumterville. A certain
Lieutenant Pettus, commanding some Rebel cavalry in our vicinity, came in
on a flag of truce at my request. I told this officer that he would not quarter
in or near houses, or fire from houses, if he cared to save them from
destruction. I also sent by this officer a note to General Ferguson,
suggesting the propriety of his recalling his scouts from attempting to
coerce the slaves to labor.
April 10. Sent parties to Vance’s Ferry and vicinity to gather corn and
rice together to feed the contrabands which had congregated together on the
march. Marched at 5:00 P.M., taking the cross-road to the State Road. At
about 10.00 P.M. we encountered twenty-five or thirty Rebel cavalry; shots
were exchanged and they disappeared, leaving a gun, some blankets, and
hats, &c.; bivouacked fifteen miles from starting point at midnight.
April 11. Marched at daylight down the State Road; found that the
bridges over Cypress Swamp were in bad condition, and was delayed by the
falling through of a limber and chest. From this delay, and my column being
encumbered by the train of refugees, I did not take the Ridgeville Road,
which was reported very heavy, but marched to the Twenty-Five Mile
House, and there bivouacked.
April 12, marched to Goose Creek, leaving there two companies and the
train of refugees. The rest of my command I marched to the Four Mile
Tavern, where they still remain. The companies left at Goose Creek have
since rejoined them there.
I remain, Very Respectfully, your obedient servant,
A. S. Hartwell

Col. Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Volunteers,

Bv’t. Brig. Gen. of Vols.
Capt. L. B. Perry,
Asst. Adjt. Gen., Northern Dist.,
Department of the South.
 ———
THE FIFTY-FIFTH MASSACHUSETTS.
———
Extracts from the Diary of Col. Charles B. Fox, covering the
visit of black troops to Somerset and
Mexico Plantations.[106]
———
April 7. The march was continued until the head of the column arrived
within a short distance of Monck’s Corner, when it turned to the left, on the
south side of the Santee Canal, and moved toward Pinopolis, a village of
summer residences similar to Pineville, though smaller. Few families or
articles contraband of war were found there. A detachment sent from
Monck’s Corner to the canal and creek bridges on the Biggin-Church Road,
reported no sign of the enemy in that direction. After marching until after
dark, the command bivouacked, in line of battle, near the house of Mr.
Cain, the artillery in position, and the men sleeping at the foot of their gun
stacks. Squads of cavalry were reported in front and rear, and a mounted
party, in advance of the infantry, were fired on just as the line for bivouac
was formed. The cavalry seen, however, did not number over twenty-five or
thirty; and the report of troops in line of battle in the front proved to be an
error. Mr. Cain’s house and plantation were very fine. He claimed to have
made an agreement with his former slaves, with which they were satisfied.
Whether they were or not, few of them left him at that time. Many of the
trees and fences around the yard were cut to strengthen the position, but the
house and grounds were not otherwise injured.
April 8. The line of march was resumed in the early morning, in a
drizzling rain, through the plantations to the Black-Oak Road, to Pineville,
where a halt for dinner was made; thence to Mexico, to the plantation of W.
M. Porcher. As the troops left Cain’s Plantation, the carriage-barn was fired,
whether by accident or design is not known. The fire did not, however,
spread to other buildings.
At Pineville, all sorts of rumors were current of the cruelties practiced by
the guerilla cavalry, who were said to have shot and hung many of the
negroes in that vicinity. The men of the Regiment were greatly excited, and
effort was necessary to preserve discipline. It was difficult to trace most of
the reports to their source, but it is to be feared that some of them had too
good foundation. One thing was certain, that a company of negroes had a
fight at Pineville, with a squad of Rebel scouts, under Lieut. Pettus, in
which the latter had been at first defeated, and only effected their purpose
after the arrival of reinforcements. Alarmed by these stories and events, an
exodus of the freed people commenced at this point, which continued
during the remainder of the expedition, until the refugee-train was far larger
than the rest of the column.
The Porcher homestead was the most elegant which the expedition had
seen. The house was filled with articles of convenience and luxury, with
treasures of art and family relics. It was situated in a large park, shaded by
magnificent trees. The position was good; and the line was formed for
bivouac, the right at the mansion house, the left beyond that of the overseer,
the out-buildings, over which guards were placed, being in the rear. There
was slight picket-firing during the night, probably, however, at cattle and
hogs. The march was resumed soon after daylight.
Mr. Porcher was known to have been an original and most decided
Rebel, and he was taken to Charleston as a prisoner; but his property would
not have been destroyed as it was, had he not in reply to the question of the
provost-marshal, “If he had any wine in his cellars” merely stated that he
had not, omitting to say that he had a large amount in the garret. During the
night a quantity of this liquor reached the mounted men of the escort, and
probably some of the refugees; and by one or the other, while in liquor, the
house and all the outbuildings, except the dwelling of the overseer which
was saved by the exertions of Chaplain Bowles, who had spent the night
there, were set fire to and destroyed as soon as the guards were withdrawn
and the troops upon the march. As soon as the existence of the wine was
ascertained by the provost-marshal, Capt. Torrey, he destroyed what
remained of it.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Northampton. A St. Julien homestead, passing by marriage into the hands of
Gen’l William Moultrie, whose name belongs to the history of the State. On this place
he made the first experiment of cotton-planting on a large scale. The substantial brick
house was destroyed by fire in 1842, but the massive walls were uninjured, and the
loss done by fire restored. (From the “Upper Beat of St. John’s, Berkeley,” by Prof. F.
A. Porcher.)
[2] William Jervey, Esq., of the Charleston Bar.
[3] Cedar Grove, my grandmother’s old home, away from the great thoroughfares,
was our refuge during the war, but Father had promised that Aunt Nenna (Mrs.
Stevens) should not be left with her two babies all alone to meet the Yankees—the
place was Northampton, near Black Oak the center of Yankee raiding. We kept
putting off our move until the news came of the army being at Orangeburg. S. R. J.
[4] Rene R. Jervey, son of W. J.
[5] James L. Jervey, C. S. A., son of W. J.
[6] William Henry Sinkler, C. S. A., son of Wm. Sinkler, of Belmont.
[7] Lieut. Oscar M. LaBorde, C. S. A., killed in the battle of Averysboro, March
15.
[8] Charles Stevens, son of Mrs. Henrietta Stevens.
[9] William Palmer;—body servant of late Henry L. Stevens, C. S. A.
[10] Mrs. Henrietta Stevens, widow of late Henry L. Stevens, C. S. A.
[11] Mr. Thomas P. Ravenel, Sr., C. S. A
[12] Hon. Wm. Cain, former Lt. Governor of South Carolina.
[13] Dr. Peter G. Snowden, C. S. A.
[14] “Neddie” Snowden, son of Dr. P. G. S.
[15] Edwin DuBose.
[16] Mrs. John S. White.
[17] A negro servant.
[18] A negro servant.
[19] A negro servant.
[20] Mrs. Jane Screven DuBose (Harbin).
[21] Dr. Henry Ravenel (Pooshee).
[22] Wm. F. Ravenel (Woodlawn).
[23] Miss Elizabeth Jervey.
[24] A negro servant (my grandmother’s faithful housekeeper). S. R. J
[25] Body servant of Henry L. Stevens, C. S. A.
[26] Negro servants; two of Uncle Henry’s most trusted negroes. S. R. J.
[27] Wm. St. Julien Jervey. C. S. A.
[28] Mrs. Percival (Maria) Porcher, widow of P. R. Porcher, C. S. A.
 [29] Col. James Ferguson, father of General S. W. Ferguson, C. S. A., “Dockon,”
his plantation on Cooper River.
[30] A non-commissioned black officer, known to the negroes as “the General.” S.
R. J.
[31] A negro servant.
[32] Charles Snowden, C. S. A., afterwards an Episcopal minister.
[33] Lilla Snowden, daughter of Dr. P. G. Snowden.
[34] A negro servant.
[35] The Rev. (Lt. Col.) Peter F. Stevens, C. S. A., rector, Black Oak Church,
afterwards Bishop, Reformed Episcopal Church.
[36] Miss Sallie Palmer, daughter of Dr. John Palmer.
[37] “John’s Run” plantation.
[38] Edward J. Dennis, C. S. A., afterwards Senator from Berkeley county.
[39] Hear the true cause of their spite was that when our army was going to St.
Stephens, a dying Confederate soldier from the islands was carried to her house and
died there. S. R. J.
[40] Mrs. Kate C. Porcher.
[41] Mrs. Kate C. Porcher’s little son.
[42] Old Quash, a servant, head-man at Cedar Grove.
[43] Dr. Henry Ravenel.
[44] Tom Porcher’s place, next to Cassawda.
[45] Mrs. Harriet (Charles J.) Snowden.
[46] This letter reached the old ladies in Walhalla a month later from Connecticut.
S. R. J.
[47] Dr. Christopher G. White.
[48] “Edward J. Dennis belonged to Co. F. Sixth South Carolina Cavalry, Col.
Hugh K. Aiken. * * * When just out of his teens, while in Virginia the latter part of
1864, took fever, and as soon as he could travel was sent on sick furlough to his home
at or near Pinopolis, then in old Charleston District, now Berkeley County. About the
time that the City of Charleston was evacuated in 1865, Dennis had recovered, and
not knowing where his command was he gathered together a squad of six men and
operated on the Santee and Cooper rivers in old Charleston District. He was a terror
to the Yankee raiding parties who gave the people of the section no end of trouble.”
(From “Butler and Cavalry, 1861-1865,” by U. R. Brooks, Columbia, S. C., 1909.)
[49] Miss Henrietta E. Ravenel, daughter of H. W. R.
[50] Miss Lydia S. Ravenel, daughter of H. W. R.
 [51] Miss Charlotte Ravenel, daughter of H. W. R.
[52] Mrs. Wm. Ravenel of Woodlawn.
[53] Miss Annie Ravenel (of Tryon, N. C.)
[54] Chelsea, plantation home of Dr. Morton Waring.
[55] The Rocks, plantation belonging to Mr. James Gaillard, Jr.
[56] Somerset, plantation belonging to Mr. Wm. Cain.
[57] The brothers Ravenel.
[58] A negro servant.
[59] Peter G. Snowden, M. D., C. S. A.
[60] Edwin DuBose, son of Samuel DuBose of Harbin.
[61] Henry W. Ravenel, the botanist of Aiken.
[62] N. Russell Middleton, LL. D., President, College of Charleston.
[63] “One day Captain Pettus, the young Texan in command of our scouts, came
and told us that a raid had started from Charleston; a negro brigade with white
officers. They told us, to our horror, that they had taken prisoner two gentlemen on
their plantations in lower St. John’s; one our friend Mr. Mazyck Porcher, and Mr.
William Ravenel a cousin of ours; and burned down Mr. Porcher’s house. * * * The
next thing we heard was that the plantation of “old Mr. James Gaillard,” had been
raided and the house almost destroyed. This was because, when the troops arrived,
they found two of the scouts riding away from the house where they had been given
breakfast. Mr. Gaillard was an old man and his house was a veritable haven of refuge
for women and children. One of the granddaughters who lived with him had an infant
of two or three weeks old, and there were a number of others, old and young,
homeless, bereaved and afflicted women. One of the officers ordered them all to leave
the house. He stood on the steps using frightful language, as he was in a towering
rage on account of their sheltering “bushwhackers,” as he called them. These women
were courageous enough to refuse to leave the house, knowing very well that it would
be burned down if they did. They all gathered on the piazza while the soldiers ripped
off the doors, tore off the shutters and threw furniture and china out of the windows;
even a melodeon.”
(From “Memories of a South Carolina Plantation During the War.” By Elizabeth
Allen Coxe, daughter of Charles Sinkler of Belvidere, pp. 40-41. Privately printed,
Phila., 1912).
[64] Thomas P. Ravenel, Sr., C. S. A.
[65] John Henry Porcher, Engineer Dept., C. S. A.
[66] James L. Jervey, C. S. A., son of William, and brother of the diarist.
[67] Henry Wm. Ravenel, the botanist.
 [68] Henry W. Ravenel, Jr., son of H. W. R.
[69] Mrs. Percival R. Porcher.
[70] Rene Ravenel, M. D.
[71] Henry Ravenel of Pooshee.
[72] Mrs. Henry L. Stevens.
[73] Emily G. Ravenel (Cain).
[74] William Jervey, Esq., of Charleston.
[75] Mrs. Rene Ravenel.
[76] Miss Lydia Ravenel.
[77] Edward Mazyck.
[78] Mrs. Thomas P. Ravenel.
[79] Thomas P. Ravenel.
[80] Mrs. Rene Ravenel.
[81] Dr. Morton Waring, of Chelsea.
[82] Mrs. John S. White.
[83] Miss H. E. Ravenel.
[84] Arnold Harvey.
[85] Mrs. Jane E. DuBose.
[86] Miss Henrietta Ravenel.
[87] Miss Lydia Ravenel.
[88] It would appear that General Potter made an even less favorable impression at
Otranto, in St. James’, Goose Creek, the home of Philip Johnstone Porcher.
“As it was then near midnight we decided to go to bed, and mother said she would
go down in the morning and request that a written protection be furnished us, as this
had been suggested by the quiet-looking officer, our protector of the afternoon before.
Therefore, as early as possible she did so, but General Potter received her very
shortly, and only replied, ‘Your husband is in the Rebel army.’ She replied, ‘it was our
desire that he should leave us, and I am glad he is not here, for if he had been I
suppose he would have been shot.’
“He replied, ‘you talk like a fool when you say that,’ and turned off; when mother
said, ‘If that is your opinion, I have the more need of protection’.”
(From “Some War-Time Letters,” by Marion Johnstone (Porcher) Ford, in “Life in
the Confederate Army,” p. 113. Neale Publishing Co., N. Y. 1905.)
[89] Wantoot was the original home settlement of the Ravenel family in St. John’s,
Berkeley.
[90] Rev. (afterwards Bishop) P. F. Stevens.
 [91] Miss Marianne E. Porcher.
[92] Dr. Morton Waring (Chelsea.)
[93] Mrs. Charles J. Snowden.
[94] Dr. Christopher G. White.
[95] Mrs. Richard Y. Dwight.
[96] Mrs. Robert Wilson.
[97] The St. John’s Hunting Club. (The Black Oak Club.)
[98] Henry LeNoble Ravenel.
[99] A band of negroes who had conspired to massacre the whites.
[100] Gen’l Sam’l W. Ferguson, C. S. A.
[101] Mrs. Peter C. Gaillard.
[102] A negro under-overseer.
[103] “The Confederate scouts who formed our patrol and police were wild and
irresponsible men, although brave and honorable; their captain, a son of Governor
Pettus of Mississippi (sic), a youth of nineteen. Except for them the country between
us and Charleston after its fall was at the mercy of bands of stragglers who burned
and pillaged recklessly in the lower neighborhood, but seldom came so far as our
plantations.” (p. 56). * * * * “At last the time came when our faithful band of
Confederate scouts were recalled. In fact, the war was over, and I suppose they really
had no longer any recognized position, but were only bushwhackers; indeed, liable to
be hung or shot if caught. Therefore, it was determined to give them a farewell party
at Mrs. Palmer’s house Springfield—even if there were some risk in it—and Deasey
and I were invited to spend the night. I was quite pleased with myself in a dress I had
made out of an old pair of white window curtains. There were about thirty scouts at
the party, and their horses were picketed close to the piazza; their guns stacked in the
corners of the large bare drawing-room, and they danced with their pistols stuck in
their top-boots which give them a very dashing look.” (P. 63). (From Mrs. E. A.
Coxe’s “Memories,” &c.)
[104] See article by W. Mazyck Porcher in the (Charleston) Weekly News, August
16, 1882.
[105] Mrs. Edwin DuBose (Harbin.)
[106] Pp. 69-70, “Record of the Service of the Fifty-fifth Regiment of
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Printed for the Regimental Association, Cambridge
Press of John Wilson & Son, July, 1868.” (Printed for private circulation.)
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO DIARIES
FROM MIDDLE ST. JOHN'S, BERKELEY, SOUTH CAROLINA,
FEBRUARY-MAY, 1865 ***

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