HOW THE GREAT KAAN SENT THE TWO BROTHERS AS HIS ENVOYS TO
THE POPE.
When that Prince, whose name was CUBLAY KAAN, Lord of the Tartars all
over the earth, and of all the kingdoms and provinces and territories
of that vast quarter of the world, had heard all that the Brothers had
to tell him about the ways of the Latins, he was greatly pleased, and
he took it into his head that he would send them on an Embassy to the
Pope. So he urgently desired them to undertake this mission along with
one of his Barons; and they replied that they would gladly execute all
his commands as those of their Sovereign Lord. Then the Prince sent to
summon to his presence one of his Barons whose name was COGATAL, and
desired him to get ready, for it was proposed to send him to the Pope
along with the Two Brothers. The Baron replied that he would execute
the Lord’s commands to the best of his ability.
After this the Prince caused letters from himself to the Pope to be
indited in the Tartar tongue,{1} and committed them to the Two Brothers
and to that Baron of his own, and charged them with what he wished
them to say to the Pope. Now the contents of the letter were to this
purport: He begged that the Pope would send as many as an hundred
persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men, acquainted with the
Seven Arts,{2} well qualified to enter into controversy, and able
clearly to prove by force of argument to idolaters and other kinds of
folk, that the Law of Christ was best, and that all other religions
were false and naught; and that if they would prove this, he and all
under him would become Christians and the Church’s liegemen. Finally
he charged his Envoys to bring back to him some Oil of the Lamp which
burns on the Sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem.{3}
NOTE 1.—✛ The appearance of the Great Kaan’s letter may be
illustrated by two letters on so-called Corean paper preserved
in the French archives; one from Arghún Khan of Persia (1289),
brought by Buscarel, and the other from his son Oljaitu (May,
1305), to Philip the Fair. These are both in the Mongol language,
and according to Abel Rémusat and other authorities, in the Uighúr
character, the parent of the present Mongol writing. Facsimiles of
the letters are given in Rémusat’s paper on intercourse with Mongol
Princes, in _Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscript._ vols. vii. and viii.,
reproductions in J. B. Chabot’s _Hist. de Mar Jabalaha III._,
Paris, 1895, and preferably in Prince Roland Bonaparte’s beautiful
_Documents Mongols_, Pl. XIV., and we give samples of the two in
vol. ii.[1]
NOTE 2.—“The Seven Arts,” from a date reaching back nearly to
classical times, and down through the Middle Ages, expressed the
whole circle of a liberal education, and it is to these Seven
Arts that the degrees in arts were understood to apply. They were
divided into the _Trivium_ of Rhetoric, Logic, and Grammar, and
the _Quadrivium_ of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry.
The 38th epistle of Seneca was in many MSS. (according to Lipsius)
entitled “_L. Annaei Senecae Liber de Septem Artibus liberalibus._”
I do not find, however, that Seneca there mentions categorically
more than five, viz., Grammar, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, and
Arithmetic. In the 5th century we find the Seven Arts to form
the successive subjects of the last seven books of the work of
Martianus Capella, much used in the schools during the early Middle
Ages. The Seven Arts will be found enumerated in the verses of
Tzetzes (_Chil. XI._ 525), and allusions to them in the mediæval
romances are endless. Thus, in one of the “Gestes d’Alexandre,” a
chapter is headed “_Comment Aristotle aprent à Alixandre les Sept
Arts._” In the tale of the Seven Wise Masters, Diocletian selects
that number of tutors for his son, each to instruct him in one of
the Seven Arts. In the romance of _Erec and Eneide_ we have a dress
on which the fairies had portrayed the Seven Arts (_Franc. Michel,
Recherches_, etc. II. 82); in the _Roman de Mahommet_ the young
impostor is master of all the seven. There is one mediæval poem
called the _Marriage of the Seven Arts_, and another called the
_Battle of the Seven Arts_. (See also Dante, _Convito_, Trat. II.
c. 14; _Not. et Ex._ V., 491 _seqq._)
NOTE 3.—The Chinghizide Princes were eminently liberal—or
indifferent—in religion; and even after they became Mahomedan,
which, however, the Eastern branch never did, they were rarely and
only by brief fits persecutors. Hence there was scarcely one of the
non-Mahomedan Khans of whose conversion to Christianity there were
not stories spread. The first rumours of Chinghiz in the West were
as of a Christian conqueror; tales may be found of the Christianity
of Chagatai, Hulaku, Abaka, Arghun, Baidu, Ghazan, Sartak, Kuyuk,
Mangu, Kublai, and one or two of the latter’s successors in China,
all probably false, with one or two doubtful exceptions.
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[1] See plates with ch. xvii. of Bk. IV. See also the Uighúr character
in the second _Païza_, Bk. II. ch. vii.
[Illustration: The Great Kaan delivering a Golden Tablet to the
Brothers. From a miniature of the 14th century.]