The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

“[P]ride, envy and covetousness have so inflamed the hearts of lords of the world that they are more busy to disinherit their neighbors than to lay claim to or conquer their own rightful inheritance.”

In the Prologue, Mandeville established a central element of the theme The Lessons Christians Can Learn From Other Cultures by highlighting the flaws of his contemporaries. However, this exists in tension with his assumption that Jerusalem is the “rightful” possession of Christians. What Christians should learn, Mandeville argues, is to launch another crusade instead of sinfully focusing on fighting each other.

“And since the land of Greece is the nearest country that varies and is discordant in faith and writing from us and our faith, I have therefore put it in here so that you may know the differences between our belief and theirs. For many men desire to hear of unfamiliar things.”

When discussing the Byzantine Empire (often conflated with Greece due to geographical and cultural overlap), Mandeville explains the text’s framing as a travel guide, which partially explains its popularity. The 14th-century European interest in foreign cultures and belief systems endeared Mandeville’s work to readers. Notably, Mandeville describes the Orthodox Byzantines as “discordant in faith” from his presumed readers, revealing the specifically Roman Catholic lens through which he interprets the world generally and Christianity specifically.

“In Babylon [Cairo] is a fine church of Our Lady; she sojourned there eight years when she fled out of the land of Judea for fear of King Herod.”

When Mandeville first describes Cairo, he references a notable church and the appearance of this location in the Bible. Mandeville interprets the world through a lens of religion, which leads him to focus on the cultural significance of an area instead of its geography and demonstrates The Interplay of Religion, Folklore, and Reality in the Medieval Mind.