Eastern Religions and The West

Eastern Religions and the West: The Making of an Image
Author(s): Nathan J. Ristuccia

Source: History of Religions, Vol. 53, No. 2 (November 2013), pp. 170-204
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Nathan J. Ristuccia EASTERN RELIGIONS
AND THE WEST: THE
MAKING OF AN IMAGE
i. introduction
In the standard history of the term, religion as a comparative category first
appeared in the West during the sixteenth century.1 On this view, religion is
not a native category but rather an implicitly anthropological one: the imposi-
tion of colonial minds contrasting themselves with the conquered or perhaps
the creation of tolerant intellectuals seeking peace amid religious wars.2
Medieval historians have rejected such a narrative.3 Long before 1492, the
1
The title of this article is a tribute to Norman Daniel’s classic Islam and the West: The Making
of an Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1960), the foundational work on medieval
views of Islam. As such, “the West” and “medieval” will refer only to the civilization of the Latin
West during the Middle Ages (ca. 500–1500), as they did in Daniel’s usage.
2
See, for instance, Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Critical Terms for
Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269–70, 276;
Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 40–43; Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning
and End of Religion: A New Approach to the Religious Traditions of Mankind (New York: New
American Library, 1963), 19–49; Michel Despland, La religion en Occident: E´volution des id ees
ecu (Montreal: Fides, 1979); John Bossy, “Some Elementary Forms of Durkheim,” Past
et du v
and Present 95 (May 1982): 3–18; Clifford Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the
Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 1–6.
3
Peter Biller, “Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion,’” Journal of Ecclesiastical His-
tory 36 (1985): 351–69; Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’ an in Latin Christendom, 1140–
1560 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 15–17; Ernst Feil, Religio: De
Ó 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

0018-2710/2013/5302-0003$10.00.

History of Religions 171
Middle Ages had an idea of something close to “religion,” even if it used lex
rather than religio to denote this category.4 And it is hardly surprising that it
did. All the early modern social conditions that supposedly caused the concept
of “religion” to arise were in place by the twelfth century: from the conquest
and colonization of formerly Islamic and pagan lands to intellectual opposi-
tion to religious warfare, from missionary activity to the literary genre of the
religious disputation.5
If scholarship on medieval theories of religion is sparse, work on medieval
understandings of particular religions is abundant. Numerous exceptional
works have appeared on Christian attitudes toward Islam, Judaism, Greco-
Roman paganism, and European medieval pagans. As of yet, however, little
is written on medieval attitudes toward the religions of China, Tibet, and
India.6 This article examines what medieval authors thought they knew about
these Eastern religions in all their aspects (theological, ritual, institutional,
material) and how these views draw on larger medieval ideas about the con-
cept of religion itself.7
Although their comparative categories were usually implicit, medieval
authors evaluated Eastern traditions according to a model of religion (lex)
derived from Christianity. Medieval writers did not equate Eastern traditions
together under a single rubric of uniform “paganism.” Instead, they presup-
posed that regions would differ from each other not only in belief but also
in religious institutions, worship practices, and material culture. Medieval
authors expected religions have to scripture, monasticism, a liturgical cycle,
and interdependent church-state hierarchies. Any people group that lacked
Geschichte eines neuzeitlichen Grundbegriffs vom Fr€ uhchristentum bis zur Reformation (G€ot-
tingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).
4
In Medieval Latin, secta and fides can also approximate the lexical range of “religion,” but
lex was more common. Religio only began to acquire this valence in Renaissance humanism.
5
Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” 276.
6
A few studies have discussed medieval views of Buddhism. While promising, these studies
are flawed by their examining perspectives on Buddhism in isolation from other Asian traditions.
Medieval Latins did not employ the concept of Buddhism and did not usually think that Buddhists
in India, Tibet, and China practiced the same religion. Western travelers could report as a single
religion beliefs and practices that came from several. It was centuries before Europeans thought
that the Theravada and Mahayana traditions were the same religion; Bernard Hamilton, Religion
in the Medieval West (London: Edward Arnold, 1987), 150–53; Frederic Lenoir, La Rencontre du
Bouddhisme et de l’Occident (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 27–60; David A. Scott, “Medieval Christian
Responses to Buddhism,” Journal of Religious History 15, no. 2 (1988): 165–84, and “Christian
Responses to Buddhism in Pre-medieval Times,” Numen 32, no. 1 (1985): 88–100; Audrius Bei-
norius, “Buddhism in the Early European Imagination: A Historical Perspective,” Acta Orientalia
Vilnensia 6, no. 2 (2005): 7–22; Timothy Pettipiece, “The Buddha in Early Christian Literature,”
Millennium–Jahrbuch 6 (2009): 133–44.
7
The terms “the East” and “Eastern” will refer to those areas of Asia to the east of the Islamic
world, essentially the regions of what is now East, Central, South, and Southeast Asia. This lan-
guage stays close to the medieval sources, which often speak of eastern lands (orientalis) and the
“wonders of the East.” This terminology is standard in scholarship on the Middle Ages.

172 Eastern Religions and the West
these aspects might have worship customs, but these did not qualify as a reli-
gion. Religionless people were further from Christianity than those who pos-
sessed a lex and thus more criticized by medieval authors.
Since medieval Westerners usually assumed that each area had its own
religious tradition, it is better to speak of medieval attitudes toward “Indian
religion” and “Chinese religion” rather than to impose modern groupings like
Hinduism and Buddhism, which the Latins did not have. For most of the Mid-
dle Ages, the West knew no more about these religions than what Roman
authors related.8 However, between 1250 and 1350, in the aftermath of the
Mongol conquests, Western travelers brought back new information on these
religions.9 This article first examines Roman and medieval ideas about the
religious traditions of China, Tibet, and India. It then compares across these
three case studies in order to consider how the medieval discourse about the
East reflected medieval conceptions of religion in general. A variety of sources,
principally travel accounts but also letters, theological texts, educational trea-
tises, and popular legends, are explored. This article seeks neither to determine
the truthfulness of Western views of the East nor to suggest what religious
ideas or practices are being referenced. Instead, it focuses on the image of East-
ern religions in the minds of Latin Christians.
ii. the late antique inheritance

Before the Mongol Conquests of the thirteenth century, the Latin West had
virtually no contact with the East.10 Thus, for roughly three-quarters of the
Middle Ages, the medieval view on these regions copied the Roman view.11
8
For Greco-Roman and medieval knowledge of Asia, Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of
Europe, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 5–48, 59–65.
9
The relationship between Christian and Muslim ideas on religions deserves further study.
Since all Latin travelers to the East journeyed through Islamic lands, and most spoke Islamic lan-
guages (e.g., Persian), Islamic perceptions of Eastern religions likely influenced these Christians.
Muslim authors, after all, were writing works studying foreign religions by the eleventh century at
the latest. This article will not examine this topic, due to space constraints and this author’s lack of
expertise in Islamic literature; for Islamic attitudes toward Eastern religions, see Muslim Percep-
tions of Other Religions: A Historical Survey, ed. Jacques Waardenburg (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1999); Bruce B. Lawrence, Shahrast anı̄ on the Indian Religions (The Hague: Mouton,
1976); Hilman Latief, “Comparative Religion in Medieval Muslim Literature,” American Journal
of Islamic Social Sciences 23, no. 4 (2006): 28–62.
10
Records mention a few pilgrims and merchants who visited India before 1250, such as Sig-
helm of Sherburn in 883 and Henry of Morungen in 1197. No travel accounts survive describing
these journeys, so they did not influence medieval views on Eastern religions; Richard Hennig,
“Indienfahrten abendl€andischer Christen im fr€uhen Mittelalter,” Archiv f€ ur Kulturgeschichte 25
(1935): 277–80; Jean Richard, “European Voyages in the Indian Ocean and Caspian Sea (12th–
15th Centuries),” Iran 6 (1968): 45–52.
11
M. P. McHugh, “Observations on the Seres in Latin Literature,” Studies in Latin Literature
and Roman History 4 (1986): 341–44; Gary K. Young, Rome’s Eastern Trade: International
Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC–AD 305 (London: Routledge, 2001), 28, 32–34, 190–91,

Pagan and late antique Christian authors had bequeathed to the Middle Ages
an intricate mix of Eastern information, of history and legends, of scientific
data and ethnographic topoi. Only as medieval travelers began to return from
their journeys in the East after 1250 did writers start supplementing these tra-
ditional sources with contemporary observations. And, while medieval authors
later sought to fit these two streams of knowledge together, at a fundamental
level the two were incommensurate, for Roman interest in Eastern religions
was almost exclusively ascetic, while medieval interest was liturgical and insti-
tutional.
Although the Romans had trading relations with the Seres (Chinese), who
were famous for their high quality iron, pelts, and, above all, silk (serica), the
Romans knew little about Chinese society.12 Indeed, with one exception, not
a single Roman Latin author discussed Chinese religion. The only Latin dis-
cussion of Chinese religion comes in Rufinus’s translation of the Pseudo-
Clementine Recognitions, a fourth-century apocryphal work widely read dur-
ing the early Middle Ages.13 Pseudo-Clement claims the Seres are a blessed
people who never get sick, live long, and strictly follow purity rules in food
and sex.14 They have no temples, sacrifices, idols, prostitutes, or thieves
because all fear the laws (leges). The Chinese, then, appear to possess moral-
195–97; Tibetan religion was unknown in the Patristic period (300–600). Since Buddhism was
only just beginning to spread to Central Asia then, Roman information would not have helped to
understand the new Tibetan religious culture of the High Middle Ages.
12
Seres could serve as the name of the people, of their chief city, or of the region around that
city. Certain Greek authors referred to another silk-producing region in what is now China, called
Sinae/ Thinae, south of Seres. Both Seres and Sinae are vague terms, which only appear together
in Greek, and essentially mean any silk-producing region east of India; Pliny the Elder, Historia
Naturalis 6.20.19, 12.18.84, 34.61.145, 37.78.204, ed. C. Mayhoff (Leipzig: Teuber, 1892–1909);
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 9.2.40, 14.3.29, 16.21.2, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1911).
13
Attitudes toward magic and astrology, rather than religion, were Pseudo-Clement’s primary
contribution to the Middle Ages. Pseudo-Clement borrows heavily from The Book of the Laws of
Countries, a Syriac work written ca. 225 by a follower of Bardaisan. On the influence of the Clem-
entine literature, see Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 46, 96–97; Nicole Kelley, “Astrology in the Pseudo-Clem-
entine Recognitions,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59, no. 4 (2008): 608–12, 627–29, and
Knowledge and Religious Authority in the Pseudo-Clementines: Situating the Recognitions in
Fourth-Century Syria (T€ubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 118–20; Fenton John Anthony Hort,
Notes Introductory to the Study of the Clementine Recognitions: A Course of Lectures (London:
Macmillan, 1901), 14–17, 75–76.
14
“Seres quia caste vivunt, expertes habentur horum omnium, quia neque post conceptum adiri
ultra apud eos feminam fas est, neque cum purgatur; carnibus ibi inmundis nemo vescitur, sacrifi-
cia nemo novit . . . neque idola venerari et in illa omni regione, quae est maxima, neque templum
invenitur neque simulacrum, neque meretrix neque adultera neque fur ad iudicium deducitur . . .
est apud seres legum metus vehementior”: Rufinus, Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, 8.48, 9.19,
9.25, ed. B. Rehm and F. Paschke, Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller (GCS) 51 (Berlin: Aka-
demie-Verlag, 1965). Pseudo-Clement gives a distinctly Jewish hue to his description of Seres,
portraying it as a nation which feared the law and avoided unclean meat and sex during menstrua-
tion. This depiction connects to the Jewish-Christian nature of the Pseudo-Clementine texts.

ity without religion, or at least without any organized cult.15 This picture has
remarkable similarities to what was once a dominant modern interpretation:
that the Chinese tradition is essentially secular, dominated by nonreligious
Confucianism and mystical Daoism with few religious components.16
Unambiguous citations of Pseudo-Clement on Chinese religion appear no
earlier than the fifteenth century. In the thirteenth century, William of Rubruck
suggested that classical Seres referred to the area that the medieval West knew
as Cathay. This equivalency, however, was not generally recognized until the
early modern period.17 Thus, Latin travelers to China after 1250 (unlike those
to India) probably arrived with no religious expectations.18
The Middle Ages before 1250 knew much more about Indian religion,
thanks to stories of Greco-Roman travelers like Alexander the Great.19 Roman
knowledge on Indian religion, however, was almost obsessively concerned
with asceticism.20 Latin authors like Jerome mention various ascetic groups in
15
One earlier author writing ca. 300, Arnobius of Sicca, mentions the existence of sacrifices in
China. However, Arnobius is just listing distant lands, without any real knowledge. Arnobius was
also rarely read; Arnobius, Adversus nationes 6.5, ed. A. Reifferscheid, Corpus Scriptorum Eccle-
siasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) 4 (Vienna: Academy of Vienna, 1875).
16
This view, which scholarship since the 1970s has demolished, is most associated with James
Legge, the nineteenth-century Sinologist; Norman J. Girardot, The Victorian Translation of
China: James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963).
17
Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan, visited Karakorum in 1253–55. He traveled on his own ini-
tiative, with missionary goals. Rubruck had talked with earlier envoys and read John of Carpini’s
earlier account. Most of Rubruck’s information on Seres came from the works of Solinus and Isi-
dore of Seville. Although the Portuguese were trading in China by the 1510s, “Cathay” was only
equated with Ming China around 1570. William of Rubruck’s text survives in only five manu-
scripts, but the English theologian Roger Bacon cited it extensively; Christoph Baumer, Southern
Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Sir Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin (Bangkok: Orchid, 2000), 11–13,
16; William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 26.8–26.9, 29.46–29.50, in Sinica Franciscana 1 (hereafter
SF), ed. Anastaas van den Wyngaert (Quaracchi-Firenze: Collegium s. Bonaventurae, 1929),
236–37, 269–71; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West: 1221–1410 (Harlow: Longman,
2005), 99–105, 136–38, 256–57, 334; E. J. R. S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 67–68, 83–84, 197–204; Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal
Envoys to the Great Khans (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971), 125–43; Jean Rich-
ard, La papaut ecles) (Rome: École française
e et les missions d’Orient au Moyen Age (XIIIe-XVe si
de Rome, 1977), 78–83; John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 18–27, 57–141; The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck, trans.
and ed. Peter Jackson and David Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2009), 1–55.
18
Antonio Bonfini, Symbosion de virginitate et pudicitia coniugali 1.517.46, ed. Stephanus
Apr o (Budapest: Egyetemi Nyomda, 1943).
19
Other Greco-Roman travelers to India include Apollonius of Tyana, Pantanaeus of Alexan-
dria, and Bardaisan.
20
While some Roman authors in Greek (e.g., Dio Chrysostom) knew substantial amounts about
Indian religion, little of this information reached the Latin West. For Latin Patristic views on
Indian religion, see Tertullian, Apolegeticum 42, ed. E. Dekkers, Corpus Christianorum Series
Latina (CCSL) 1 (Turnhout: Brepols 1954); Jerome, Epistolae 53.1, 107.8, ed. I. Hilberg, CSEL
54–55 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1910–18); Jerome, Commentarii in Ezechielem 4.14, ed. F. Glorie,
CCSL 75 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), Commentarii in Naum 3, ed. M. Adriaen, CCSL 76A (Turn-

India: gymnosophists, “brachmani” (Brahmins), “samanaei” (Shramana).21

The distinction between these groups, when it exists at all, is vague. Most
often, authors just assert that these groups lived in different countries, but a
few authors, especially Jerome, claim that these are different ascetic schools
(dogmata).22 All these ascetics seem to live as celibate philosopher hermits in
deserted forests, living on wild fruit or on public grain doles, drinking water or
milk, and worshipping in the nude.23 Supposedly, gymnosophists could look
straight at the sun all day without blinking and stand for hours one-legged on
scalding hot sand; they could endure the coldest snow, strongest wind, and the
hottest fire without complaint.24
hout: Brepols, 1970), and Adversus Iovinianum 2.14, ed. J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Comple-
tus, Series Latina [PL] 23.303); Augustine, De civitate Dei 14.17, 15.20, ed. A. Kalb, CCSL 48
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1955); Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistolae 8.3.4, ed. C. L€utjohann, Monumenta
Germaniae Historica Auctores Antiquissimi (MGH AA) 8.128 (Berlin, 1887); Isidore of Seville,
Etymologiae 8.6.17.
21
Greek authors (e.g., Megasthenes) contrast two types of gymnosophists: the Brahmins, a
hereditary priesthood who keep purity regulations and perform long liturgies, and the Shramanas,
hermits who leave their family and property to join a religious order. Supposedly both groups were
supported by the Indian rulers and believed in immortality of the soul. A similar dichotomy
appears both in Indian literature and modern scholarship, contrasting the hereditary Hindu priest-
hood with wandering ascetics from any caste who might be Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, or Ajivik. No
Latin author, however, demonstrates awareness of this detailed view. In Latin, gymnosophist
refers to any kind of Indian hermit (often a synonym for Shramana) and is set in opposition to
Brahmin; Demetrios Th. Vassiliades, The Greeks in India: A Survey in Philosophical Understand-
ing (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2000), 44–53, 73–81; Grant Parker, The Making of
Roman India: Greek Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008), 1–6, 33–41, 251–307; Thomas Hahn, “The Indian Tradition in Western Medieval Intellec-
tual History,” Viator 9 (1978): 213–15; Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle
Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 189–200; Richard
Stoneman, “Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and the Alexander
Romance.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995): 108–14, and “Who Are the Brahmans? Indian
Lore and Cynic Doctrine in Palladius’ De Bragmanibus and Its Models,” Classical Quarterly, n.s.,
44, no. 2 (1994): 508–10.
22
Patristic and medieval authors considered the whole area from the Horn of Africa to Indone-
sia to be India. They divided this expanse into various regions, with inconsistent names and bound-
aries (e.g., Greater India, Lesser India, Third India, Ethiopia). The name India, thus, can refer to
any or all of these places. Patristic and medieval authors disagree when they try to locate each
ascetic group within a specific region of India.
23
The gymnosophists supposedly could also work miracles and received worship from the
Indian king because their prayers ensured the peace of the kingdom. Some modern scholars have
argued that the gymnosophists were Digambar Jains. However, as gymnosophists wage war in
classical literature, they cannot be identified exclusively with Jains; Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum
2.14, Epistolae 53.1, 107.8, Commentarii in Ezechielem 4.14; Pomponius Mela, De chorographia
3.64–3.65, ed. C. Frick (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880); Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de preliis J1 98,
99.21–99.50, in Historia Alexandri Magni (Historia de preliis): Rezension J1, ed. Alfons Hilka
and Karl Steffens (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1979), 176–79, 180–83.
24
Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis 6.24.89, 7.2.22; Cicero, De divinatione 1.23.47, ed.
R. Giomini (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1975), and Tusculanae disputationes 2.22.52, 5.27.77, ed. M. Poh-
lenz (Leipzig: Teubner, 1918); Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de preliis J1 99.65–99.91 (Hilka
and Steffens, Historia Alexandri Magni, 184–87).

The Latin translation of the Alexander Romance (the Historia de preliis) is

even less clear than Jerome about the difference between Brahmins and gym-
nosophists/Shramana.25 The romance portrays gymnosophists and Brahmins
as two distinct ethnic groups (gentes) rather than as religious groups. Both
supposedly are utopian tribes of naked hut dwellers who worship differently
from most Indian pagans.26 The Brahmins go to schools, which expound their
scriptures and teach virtue.27 They seem to be monotheists, singing and pray-
ing continually to one undepictable creator god and believing in eternal life,
while rejecting idols, sophistic philosophy, animal sacrifice, temples, and
altars.28 While the Brahmins are presented as happy, the Historia de preliis
also suggests that their utopia is impractical.29 Moreover, not all Brahminic
religious ideas would be positive to Christian ears; the Brahmins boast that
they never forgive others or seek forgiveness and do no penance.30 Medieval
theologians would have thought the Brahmins were preaching Pelagianism.
When Roman authors did discuss the religion of the majority of Indians (as
opposed to the religion of these ascetic groups), they contrasted the base wor-
ship of the masses with the nobler religious sentiments of the Indian ascet-
25
Both Julius Valerius (ca. 300) and Leo the Deacon (ca. 1000) translated Pseudo-Callisthenes
into Latin. The most popular text of the romance during the Middle Ages was a revised version of
Leo’s text called the Historia de preliis. The Historia de preliis, which comes in three distinct
recensions and dates from around 1100, adds to Leo’s text significant extracts from Josephus, from
classical geographers (Isidore, Orosius, Solinus), and from three other Alexander treatises: the
Latin translation of Palladius’s de Gentibus Indiae et Bragmanibus, the letter of Alexander to Aris-
totle, and the correspondence of Alexander and Dindimus. Thus, the Historia de preliis serves
almost as anthology of the whole Alexander tradition. This article will only discuss the first recen-
sion of the Historia de preliis out of space constraints, but most of what is said about it is also true
for the second and third recensions. For a introduction to the texts of the Alexander Romance, see
Richard Stoneman, Legends of Alexander the Great (London: Dent & Tuttle, 1994), ix–xlii; The
History of Alexander’s Battles: Historia de preliis, the J1 version, trans. R. Telfryn Pritchard
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1992), 1–12; Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in
the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2009).
26
Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de preliis J1 78, 90 (Hilka and Steffens, Historia Alex-
andri Magni, 140–43, 166–69).
27
Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de preliis J1 99.92–99.99 (Hilka and Steffens, Historia Alex-
andri Magni, 186–87).
28
Dindimus’s letters condemn aspects of Greek polytheism; Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de
preliis J1 99.155–99.251, 101.8–101.49 (Hilka and Steffens, Historia Alexandri Magni, 190–97,
202–5); Rufinus, Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, 1.33, 9.20, 9.25.
29
In the romance, Alexander writes letters objecting to the Brahminic life. According to Alex-
ander, the Brahmins live like beasts, too poor to have buildings and agriculture. They do not under-
stand the joys of learning and aesthetic experience and live peacefully only because they are so
remote that no enemies bother to attack. The romance allows the reader to judge the merits, with-
out favoring either Alexander or the Brahmins; Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de preliis J1 100,
102 (Hilka and Steffens, Historia Alexandri Magni, 198–207).
30
Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de preliis J1 99.60–99.70 (Hilka and Steffens, Historia Alex-
andri Magni, 184–85).

ics.31 Thus, while the ascetics are worshipping their one god, most Indian
polytheists are supposedly off sacrificing on idolatrous outdoor altars or burn-
ing widows on their husband’s funeral pyres. According to Latin authors, can-
nibalism, euthanasia, astrology, and tree worship are all key elements in Indian
religion.32 Again, the Romans anticipated a dichotomy that was once common
in modern scholarship on India: admiration of Indian theologies like Buddhism
and Vedanta at the same time as distaste for the actual religious practices of the
majority of the population.33
The name of the Buddha, but little about him, also appears in Roman Latin
literature. According to a few Patristic authors, such as Jerome, the Buddha
was a wandering ascetic, born of a virgin, who founded a school of asceti-
cism.34 But because these authors clearly only learned about the Buddha from
Manichaean texts, they associate him with Zoroaster and Mani, locate him in
Persia, and claim he taught a dualist theology of two principles of light and
darkness.35 The limited pre-1250 knowledge of the Buddha was merely the
31
Ordinary Indian polytheists are presented as worshipping euhemerized idols of Hercules,
Dionysius, or their King Porus. This description may be totally fictional, or some syncretistic
attempt to identify Roman gods with Indian ones; Curtius, Historia 8.9.31–37, 8.11.24–25,
8.14.11–12, 9.8.5–7, ed. E. Hedicke (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912); Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem:
Ad codicum fidem edita et commentario critico instructa 25.13–28.4, 41.4–52.6, ed. W. Walther
Boer (The Hague: Excelsior, 1953); Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis 6.24.89, 7.2.22; Rufinus,
Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, 1.33, 9.20, 9.25; Pseudo-Callisthenes, Historia de preliis J1
106 (Hilka and Steffens, Historia Alexandri Magni, 210–17); Pomponius Mela, De chorographia
3.64–3.65; Cicero, De divinatione 1.23.47, 1.30.65, Tusculanae disputationes 2.22.52, 5.27.77;
Ambrose, Epistolae 2.7.34–37 (37.34–37), ed. O. Faller, CSEL 82 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1968);
Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memoria 1.6.10, ed. C. Kempf (Leipzig: Teubner, 1888); Vassi-
liades, Greeks in India, 47. Euthanasia is most associated with the self-immolation of the gymnos-
ophist Calanus/Dandamis, although Curtius claims that all Indian wise men seek to be burned alive
before they die and use astrology to predict their day of death.
32
The longest depiction of an Indian shrine is the story of Alexander’s visit to the shrine of the
trees of the sun and moon, in the Historia de preliis. (Tree worship is also mentioned in Curtius.)
This gilded and jewel-encrusted temple stands at the top of a mountain, up an ornate staircase.
Incense and fragrant tree cuttings are mentioned repeatedly, suggesting that the temple’s smell is
as impressive as its appearance. The priest of the temple is a bearded giant dressed in silk who
enforces a list of taboos: worshippers must be chaste and humbly clothed, no animals can enter,
and no libation or sacrifice can occur.
33
See, e.g., the views of the foundational scholar of comparative religion, F. Max M€uller, in
Lourens P. van den Bosch, Friedrich Max M€ uller: A Life Devoted to the Humanities (London:
Brill, 2002); this Humean distinction between elite and popular religion is age-old and also appears
in Islamic sources.
34
Jerome mentions the Buddha in a work on virginity, while providing examples of perpetual
virginity from pagan religions: “apud gymnosophistas indiae . . . buddam, principem dogmatis
eorum, e latere suo virgo generarit”: see Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 1.42, and Epistolae 53.1;
Parker, The Making of Roman India, 291–93; Lenoir, Rencontre du Bouddhisme, 32–35; Scott,
“Christian Responses,” 88–90; Beinorius, “Buddhism in the Early European Imagination,” 8–9.
35
The Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mani are all members of the Manichaean chain of prophets.
According to one text, the Buddha was originally named Terebinthus; Hegemonius, Acta Archelai
65, ed. C. H. Beeson, GCS 16 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1906); “iam vidisti ne ergo quot manis, zoradis
aut buddas haec docendo deceperint”: Pseudo-Victorinus, Ad Iustinum Manichaeum 7 (PL

transmission of a name within the context of Manichaean polemic. For the

Latin West before 1250, the Buddha was a Manichee.
Patristic authors often mention gymnosophists within a context comparing
Christian ascetics to a list of religious figures, such as Pythagoreans, Essenes,
Mithras, or Zoroaster, usually with their countries of origins listed.36 These
comparisons highlight similarities between the practices of pagans and Chris-
tians. For example, Jerome exhorts a bishop to scriptural study by mentioning
the devotion of various pagan religious experts to their own scripture.37 In
such passages, then, the gymnosophists are treated as one example of a com-
parative category of religious expert. For the Patristic authors, each country
has its own religious tradition with its own group of religious experts (e.g.,
Hierophants from Egypt, Magi from Persia) and with many of the same reli-
gious practices. While Patristic authors sometimes prefer the gymnosophists
to other pagan experts, they always compare the Indian philosophers nega-
tively to Christian monks, the religious expert par excellence. The asceticism
and piety of the gymnosophists thus goad Christians to live more righteously.
While this form of comparative religion has an explicitly theological agenda,
that does not remove its comparative component.
Latin Roman literature provides a broadly similarly perspective on Indian
religion. Most Indians are much like Greco-Roman pagans, with a polytheis-
tic cult based around temples, statues, altars, and trees. Small ascetic groups,
on the other hand, above all the Brahmins, follow a philosophic religion
focused on a creator god. While this vision of India reflects some true knowl-
edge, these attitudes mainly grow from the disgust of a Cynic looking at Hel-
lenistic religion or of a Christian monk looking at Late Antique paganism.
These descriptions, moreover, became commonplaces about India in
medieval literature. Even before the Mongol conquests, medieval Christians
8.1003); the Life of Barlaam and Josaphat, a Christianized biography of the Buddha translated
into Latin in the eleventh century, came through Manichaean intermediaries. This vita was thought
to be a normal Christian hagiography throughout the Middle Ages, and scholars only recognized
its dependence on biographies of the Buddha in the early modern period (though, see the discus-
sion of Polo’s story of the Buddha below). Thus, despite its source, this hagiography did not con-
tribute to Western views of Eastern religions; Graeme MacQueen, “Rejecting Enlightenment?
The Medieval Christian Transformation of the Buddha-Legend in Jacobus de Voragine’s Barlaam
and Josaphat,” Studies in Religion: Canadian Journal 30, no. 2 (2001): 151–65; Philip C.
Almond, “The Buddha of Christendom: A Review of the Legend of Barlam and Josaphat,” Reli-
gious Studies 23, no. 3 (1987): 391–406; Pettipiece, “Buddha in Early Christian Literature,” 140–
42; Beinorius, “Buddhism in the Early European Imagination,” 10–11.
36
Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem 1.306.26, ed. E. Dekkers, CCSL 1 (Turnhout: Brepols
1954); Claudianus Mamertus, De statu animae 2.8, Epistolae 2.204, ed. A. Engelbrecht, CSEL 11
(Vienna: Tempsky, 1885); Jerome, Adversus Iovinianum 2.14, Epistolae 53.1, 107.8, Commen-
tarii in Ezechielem 4.14, Commentarii in Naum 3; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 8.6.17.
37
Jerome, Epistolae 53.1; similarly, Jerome uses various pagan clerics in Adversus Iovinianum
as testimonies to the popularity of virginity in pagan religions. In letter 107, he points out how vari-
ous pagan ascetics have food laws.

mixed information on Indian religion from a variety of Roman sources to

develop their own theological ideas.38 Two examples may illustrate this phe-
nomenon. The Carolingian theologian Ratramnus (d. ca. 870) rewords Je-
rome’s discussion of the Buddha’s birth, to make an argument about Christ’s
virgin birth.39 In the twelfth century, similarly, Peter Abelard cites the Brah-
mins as one of several pagan witnesses to the Trinity. Abelard claims that
God inspired the Brahmins with knowledge of true doctrine.40 Already before
1250, then, authors in the Latin West employed comparative information on
Indian religion in arguments about Christian theology.
iii. traveling east in the mongol century

Multiple scholars have already superbly told the narrative of the mendicant
embassies and missions to the East between roughly 1250 and 1350.41 None-
theless, a brief discussion of the context of these travelers is necessary to
understand the literary interpretations of Eastern religions that they left
behind. The Mongols first appear in Western sources around 1220, when the
Mongols began raids on the lands of the Rus, in the Caucasus, and in Syria.42
They invaded the Latin West in 1241–44. Mendicant missions to steppe peo-
38
For the influence of Patristic views, Hahn, Indian Tradition, 213–34; for examples of medie-
val authors adapting these views, see Hrabanus Maurus, Commentarii in Ezechielem 6.13 (PL
110.656), and De rerum naturis 15.1 (PL 111.415); Ekkehard of Aura, Chronicon Universale 1
(PL 154.586); Honorius Augustodunensis, De Haeresibus (PL 172.235); Landolfus Sagax, Addita-
menta ad Pauli Historiam Romanam 7.20–35, ed. H. Droysen, MGH AA 2.303 (Berlin, 1879);
Robert Grosseteste, Hexa€ emeron P.30, 32–35, 49, ed. Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben (Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1982), 24–27, 30; Humbert of Romans, Tractatus de Dono Timoris
7.266–74, 8.97–105, ed. Christine Boyer, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (CCCM)
218 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008); Thomas of Cantimpre, Liber de natura rerum 3.3–3.4, ed. H. Boese
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1973).
39
Ratramnus was debating whether the birth of Christ occurred through Mary’s womb or her
side (latus). He mocks his opponents by suggesting that the side option makes Christ’s birth no dif-
ferent from the Buddha’s. Ratramnus’ claims the Buddha is the founder (sectae suae auctorem) of
Brahmins, while Jerome had called him a leader (principem dogmatis) of the gymnosophist. To
Ratramnus, at least, the groups were the same: “bragmanorum sequemur opinionem, ut quemadmo-
dum illi sectae suae auctorem bubdam per virginis latus narrant exortum”; see Ratramnus, De eo
quod Christus ex virgine natus est 3 (PL 121.87).
40
Abelard (1079–1142) praises the Brahmins’ rejection of animal sacrifice and claims that
Christian monks do not equal the Brahmins in piety. Indeed, Abelard maintains that God ensured
that the Brahmins listened to the preaching of Pantaenus, a Christian missionary. Thus, Abelard
seems to think that the Brahmins were once a pagan group, but now have become the Indian Thom-
asine Christians; Peter Abelard, Theologia christiana 1.131–33, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert, CCCM
12 (Turnhout: Brepols 1969), and Theologia scholarium 1.195–97, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert,
CCCM 13 (Turnhout: Brepols 1969).
41
See, e.g., E. Randolph Daniel, Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages (St.
Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1992), 109–27; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 57–141;
Jackson, Mongols and the West, 87–105, 256–328.
42
David Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 120–25, 152–73; Jackson, Mon-
gols and the West, 47–49, 59–60; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 64–82.

ples, however, had already begun a generation before the Mongols, among
the Cumans and Bashkirs of Eastern Europe.43
Thus when in 1245 the papacy first began to send out embassies to the
Mongols, seeking peace, an alliance against various Muslim powers, and per-
haps conversion, it was natural to use mendicants.44 The first new accounts of
Eastern religions came through the work of papal diplomats to the Mongol
court in Karakorum.45 While these diplomats never visited India, Tibet, or
China, they did converse with people from those regions, and two (John of
Plano Carpini and Benedict of Poland) left narratives of their interactions.46
Outright missions would wait until the work of William of Rubruck the
1250s and later, but it is dangerous to draw any sharp lines between missionar-
ies and diplomats. The desire to convert infidels, reconcile heretics to Rome,
win allies, go on pilgrimage, and trade often existed simultaneously within
the mind of the same traveler. The Venetian merchant Marco Polo is only the
most famous of many travelers during the Mongol age.47 Settlements of
43
Jackson, Mongols and the West, 16–18, 61–63; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 67–68, 83–84;
Richard, La papaut e et les missions, 20–32.
44
Jackson, Mongols and the West, 87–105; Morgan, The Mongols, 14–15, 22–25, 140–42,
163–65; Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys, 89–143; Richard, La papaut e et les missions, 69–86; the use
of clergy as diplomats was a common in Central Asian international relations. For instance, the
Southern Sung Dynasty in 1221 sent a Daoist monk as a diplomat to the Mongols. Similarly, Rabban
Sauma, a Turkic Nestorian monk, served as an ambassador to the West for the Il-Khan ruler Arghun
in 1287.
45
The other European diplomats to the Mongol court did not leave extensive records like Car-
pini and Benedict and did not discuss religion much.
46
These two Franciscans led together an embassy 1244–47, and both produced ethnographic
histories. Carpini’s Ystoria Mongalorum appears in numerous manuscripts, and portions of his
account were incorporated into Vincent of Beauvais’s popular encyclopedia, the Speculum histor-
iale. Carpini wanted his work to be well known, for the historian Salimbene mentions that Carpini
held public readings of his history, in which he added oral elucidations. The Tartar Relation, on
the other hand, was written by an anonymous Franciscan based on Benedict’s information. It
revises parts of Carpini’s earlier account and survives in only one manuscript; Jackson, Mongols
and the West, 87–92, 137, 145; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 72–82, 197–204; Rachewiltz,
Papal Envoys, 89–111; Richard, La papaut e et les missions, 20–32, 70–72.
47
For Polo’s interest in religion (Polo even owned a Buddhist rosary at his death), see Leonardo
Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 178–298; Larner,
Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World, 3–5, 45, 58, 74–77, 102–4, 110–13, 129–32; Polo
dictated his Description of the World while in a Genoese jail in 1298 to the romance author Rusti-
chello of Pisa (who rewrote parts). It describes Polo’s experiences in Asia in the 1270s to 1290s
and is the best single source for Latin views on China and Tibet. Rustichello’s French text was fre-
quently read and translated (indeed, the Pipino Latin version is more common in manuscripts).
Some version of Polo’s work survives in nearly 150 manuscripts; Jackson, Mongols and the West,
310–15, 331–50, 363–65; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 108–21, 193–94, 204–6; Joan-Pau
Rubies, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South Indian through European Eyes, 1250–
1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 35–84; Suzanne M. Yeager, “The World
Translated: Marco Polo’s Le Divisement dou monde, The Book of Sir John Mandeville, and their
Medieval Audiences,” in Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West, ed. Suzanne Conklin
Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 156–59; the textual
history of the Description of the World remains complex and debated. Polo seems to have revised

Latins (especially Italian merchants like Polo and mendicant friars like
Rubruck) and Uniate Christians appeared at key entrepôts, such as Quilon
(Kollam) in India and Iamzai (Yangzhou) in China.48 After new bishoprics
were established in Asia, at cities such as Quilon, Zaiton (Quanzhou), and
Khanbaliq (Beijing), bishops like John of Montecorvino and Jordanus of
Severac devoted more of their time to ministering to expatriate Christians
than they did to converting the heathen.49 Roughly a dozen accounts survive
from 1244 to 1349, detailing the encounter of Latin travelers with the East.50
All these accounts, then, provide a roughly contemporary vision of Asia,
with numerous similarities, and even borrowings, between them. Together,
they represent the culmination of medieval thought on Eastern religions. Easy
travel across Asia came to an end by 1350 for a number of reasons: the con-
version of the western khanates to Islam, the fall of the Yuan Dynasty in
China, and the Black Death. Most of Asia was shut off to Latin travelers until
the voyages of exploration in the sixteenth century. Indeed, two famous fif-
teenth-century travelers to India, Niccolò de’ Conti and Afanasy Nikitin, con-
verted to Islam (at least nominally) for their own safety.51 Throughout the
the Rustichello text around 1307, leading to two basic recensions. Probably no “original” text of
the work can be formulated. However, the received manuscript texts matter more than the original,
because these received texts shaped European attitudes.
48
While some scholars have claims that Polo never actually visited China, this argument has
been forcefully refuted; Frances Wood, Did Marco Polo Go to China? (London: Secker & War-
burg, 1995); Stephen G. Haw, Marco Polo’s China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan
(New York: Routledge, 2006); Igor de Rachewiltz, “Marco Polo Went to China,” Zentralasia-
tische Studien 27 (1997): 34–92.
49
Jordanus was a French Dominican who became the first bishop of Quilon in India and pro-
duced a travelogue in 1328, which exists in only one manuscript. While Jordanus mainly discusses
India, most Latin merchants and missionaries (including Montecorvino, Polo, and Marignolli)
passed through Quilon on their way to and from China, so he knew much on the lands further east
as well. Indeed, Western travelers often stayed at Quilon for long periods. Both Montecorvino and
Marignolli were there for over a year. Montecorvino was the missionary-archbishop to the Yuan
court in Khanbaliq for over twenty-five years (1264–1328). Three of his letters survive, all dating
to the first decade of the fourteenth century. The last fifteen years of his life are known only from
the writings of later missionaries; John of Montecorvino, Epistolae (SF, 333–55); Jackson, Mon-
gols and the West, 229, 258–61, 334; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 87–89, 97–99, 109–10;
Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys, 160–86, 198; Richard, La papaut e et les missions, 144–49, 190–95;
Rubies, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 58–64.
50
These accounts (most of which date from 1290 to 1330) are diverse in their length and genre:
letters, geographical treatises, missionary reports, crusade manuals, and romance-like travelogues;
for details, see Scott, “Medieval Christian Responses,” 166–67; Antonio Garcı́a Espada, “Marco
Polo, Odorico of Pordenone, the Crusades, and the Role of the Vernacular in the First Descriptions
of the Indies,” Viator 40, no. 1 (2009): 201–22.
51
Nikitin (d. ca. 1474), although he felt guilt about his brief conversion to Islam, twice recom-
mends false conversion as a policy for all merchants going to India; Nikitin, Journey across Three
Seas, trans. Richard H. Major, in India in the Fifteenth Century (London: Hakluyt Society, 1857),
11, 25; in the first decade of the sixteenth century, the Italian traveler Ludovico de Varthema simi-
larly feigned Islamic conversion. This practice, then, became standard. Conti was a Venetian mer-
chant who traveled in Asia for over two decades (1419–44). The renowned humanist Poggio Brac-

Late Middle Ages, the European reading public demonstrated a voracious

interest in reading, copying, and translating travel accounts, especially the
writings of Polo, Carpini, Hayton of Gorgios, and, above all, the fictional
knight John Mandeville.52 Thus, even as the number of actual travelers in
Asia declined, the image of the East continued to have an impact.
iv. a distant empire

While Carpini, Rubruck, and other envoys preserve some information on Chi-
nese religion learned through their conversations in Karakorum, missionaries
to China, such as Odoric of Pordenone, John of Marignolli, and John of Cora,
began producing works just after 1300.53 Missionary letters also survive that
ciolini produced a literary retelling of Conti’s travels as the fourth book of a work on the vicissi-
tudes of fortune; Poggio Bracciolini, De l’Inde: Les voyages en Asie de Niccolò de’ Conti; De var-
ietate fortunae, livre IV, ed. Michele Gueret-Laferte (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004); Phillips, Medieval
Expansion, 222–23, 232, 250–51; Rubies, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 85–124; the
Spanish author Pero Tafur wrote another version of Conti’s travels, though its reliability is
debated. Bracciolini’s account survives in thirty-one manuscripts, was translated into Italian, and
influenced other Renaissance geographical works.
52
Hayton was an Armenian prince turned Premonstratensian canon, whose 1307 crusade man-
ual was promulgated widely. The work was dictated in French, written down in Latin, and then
retranslated into French. It circulated well. The Travels of John Mandeville was composed in Nor-
man French by an unknown cleric, perhaps in the vicinity of Liege, around 1357. Mandeville bor-
rows heavily on the work of Odoric of Pordenone but also knew Hayton, Vincent of Beauvais, and
classical stories of the wonders of the East, as well as other sources. Mandeville was translated
often and survives in nearly three hundred manuscripts. Some of the most informative accounts of
the East, though, such those by Jordanus and Rubruck, languished in obscurity for centuries; Iain
Macleod Higgins, Writing East: The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 6–10, 19–25, 170–78, 224–38, 242–46; Jackson, Mongols and the
West, 120–21, 137, 333–49; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 138, 205–12; Rachewiltz, Papal
Envoys, 186, 207; Richard, La papaut e et les missions, 150, 200–202, 295; Yeager, “The World
Translated,” 160–62; M. C. Seymour, Sir John Mandeville (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993), 1–24;
Rosemary Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the Book of Sir
John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 1–38.
53
Odoric of Pordenone (d. 1331), a Franciscan, dictated a travelogue in the 1320s. Odoric was
beatified, in the eighteenth century, and a later hagiography survives, though all its information on
Eastern religions derives from Odoric’s own memoir. Odoric’s narrative was popular in the late
Middle Ages, surviving in around one hundred manuscripts, and was translated into Italian,
French, and German. John of Marignolli was a Franciscan ambassador to the Yuan court in China
in 1342–45, who inserted material about his experiences into the early sections of a chronicle he
wrote discussing the relationship between contemporary geography and the biblical account of the
spread of nations. Marignolli had read Odoric and disagreed with him occasionally. His work sur-
vives in only one manuscript, but Columbus likely knew the work. (Columbus also owned a copy
of the works of John Mandeville and of Marco Polo.) John of Cora was the Franciscan archbishop
of Sultaniyya, in Persia, who wrote a report on China around 1330. While he may never have trav-
eled there, John had met Montecorvino and was well informed about China. His report survives
only in a French translation and was not influential. See Jackson, Mongols and the West, 259–63,
266, 275, 331–49; Phillips, Medieval Expansion, 91–95, 99–100, 194–97; Rachewiltz, Papal
Envoys, 176–86, 191–201; Richard, La papaut e et les missions, 132, 151, 180–81, 191–92;
Rubies, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 74–77.

testify to the difficulty Latin missionaries had winning converts in China.54

These Western authors unanimously portray the empire of Cathay as an image
of the Christendom they knew: a powerful unified empire with a complex reli-
gion that is patronized by rulers and peasants alike.55 Every city of the Chi-
nese empire has both temples of idols and monasteries staffed by monks,
nuns, and pontiffs.56 Monasteries there are rich and large (often over two hun-
dred monks, sometimes as many as three thousand). Their rules of life involve
54
In addition to Montecorvino’s three letters, two letters are extant that document the work of
the bishops of Zaiton from 1313 to 1332. Montecorvino established this see in 1313, to serve as a
bishopric for southern China (as his own see in Khanbaliq was for the north). Three Franciscans
had just arrived to assist him; Jackson, Mongols and the West, 261–64; Phillips, Medieval Expan-
sion, 89–91; Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys, 171–86; Richard, La papaut e et les missions, 150–52;
Zaiton was a good choice for the new bishopric, for it was a religiously diverse port, with commu-
nities of Muslims, Jews, Manichaeans, Nestorians, and Armenians, as well as the traditional Chi-
nese religions. While Peregrinus of Castello’s letter, in 1318, tells us nothing at all about the Chi-
nese religion, Andrew of Perugia, in his 1326 letter, notes that the Yuan dynasty allowed diverse
sects (secta) to flourish, since the Yuan believed that every human is saved in his own sect.
Andrew gloomily implies that this universalist attitude prevented successful missions. Apparently,
the preachers failed to convince any Jews or Muslims to convert, and though they baptized many
“idolaters” (presumably Chinese), these pagan converts continued syncretistic practices. Even the
martyrdom and postmortem miracles of four friars in India failed to win converts: “in isto vasto
imperio sunt gentes de omni natione quae sub coelo est et de omni septa. Et conceditur omnibus et
singulis vivere secundum septam suam. Est enim hec opinio apud eos seu potius error quod unus-
quisque in sua septa salvatur . . . de ydolatris battizzantur quam plurimi sed battizati non recte
incedunt per viam christanitatis”: Andrew of Perugia, Epistolae 5–6 (SF, 376); reading secta for
septa.
55
For religion under the Yuan, see Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan
and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010), 161–85; Christopher P. Atwood, “Valida-
tion by Holiness or Sovereignty: Religious Toleration as Political Theology in the Mongol World
Empire of the Thirteenth Century,” International Historical Review 26, no. 2 (2004): 237–56;
James D. Ryan, “Conversion vs. Baptism? European Missionaries in Asia in the Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries,” Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), 146–70.
56
Not all Latin authors consider Chinese temples and monasteries to be separate institutions:
Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 127, 138 (Une image de l’Orient au XIV si ecle: Les
Mirabilia descripta de Jordan Catala de S everac, ed. and trans. Christine Gadrat [Paris: École des
Chartes, 2005], 261–63); John of Cora, Book of the Estate of the Great Caan 2 (M. Jacquet, “Livre
de l’estat du Grant Caan,” Journal Asiatique 6 [1830]: 63); Hayton of Gorgios, Flos Historiarum
Terre Orientis 1.1, ed. C. K€ohler, Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Documents Armeniens
(RHCDA) (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1906), 2:121–22, 261–62; John of Marignolli, Relatio
500.2–500.3 (SF, 536); Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 20.1, 21.2 (SF, 458–59, 460–61); Polo,
Description of the World 1.61 (Milione: Le divisament dou monde, ed. Gabriella Ronchi [Milan:
Mondadori, 2000], 75.29–33; The Description of the World, ed. and trans. A. C. Moule and Paul
Pelliot [London: Routledge, 1938], 75; all citations from Polo are based on a comparison between
these two standard editions; French quotations are from Ronchi’s version of the F text; numberings
are according to Yule-Cordier [The Travels of Marco Polo: The Complete Yule-Cordier Edition, 2
vols. (New York: Dover, 1993)], with the Ronchi and Moule-Pelliot numbers following in paren-
theses); Mandeville, Travels 16.89.5–13 (due to the great complexity of Mandeville’s tradition,
this article will cite, for convenience, from the most popular Middle English version: M. C. Sey-
mour, The Defective Version of Mandeville’s Travels [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002]).

special clothing, almsgiving, set hours of prayer and of idolatrous sacrifice

marked by bells, fasting, the worship of diverse idols of gold and silver, choral
singing, and sermons; Latin authors note that their asceticism is much like
European monasticism.57 Some abbeys have over ten thousands idols, all as
big if not bigger than the largest sculptures in Christian churches.58 One mon-
astery, at the city of Camsay (Hangzhou), keeps a large menagerie of animals,
which the monks believe are the spirits of the dead. The more noble someone
was in life, the more noble the animal that he is reincarnated as shall be
(indeed some are reincarnated as people).59
While essentially all the Latins noticed diversity among Chinese clergy
(monks, astrologers, priests, ystriones) and sects, only Polo names separate
groups: foreign Bacsi from Tibet, local Chinese monks, and the order of the
Sensin. Due to their different worship styles, most of the Chinese consider the
Sensin to be heretics. Polo calls them “Patarins,” suggesting that the rigorist
Sensin reminded him of European Cathars.60
The semi-Christian appearance of Chinese monasticism led Montecorvino
to claim that a variety of idolatrous sects thrive in China, each having its own
monks with their own special clothes and monastic observance (observan-
tia).61 In contrast, Montecorvino asserts that Central Asian pagans “know no
57
Christian authors believe that these idols receive sacrifices of food but apparently not of ani-
mals; Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 127, 138 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 261–
63); John of Cora, Book of the Estate 2 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,” 63); John of Marignolli, Relatio
509.6 (SF, 548); Odoric claims that the monks themselves actually eat the food after its smell has
fed the idol: Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 21.2 (SF, 460–61). William of Rubruck asserts that Chi-
nese hermits dwell in forests and mountains but that Cathay also has a separate class of priests
dressed in red robes with saffron cowls. While he claims Chinese priests all wear cucullas latas
croceas, he describes the one such priest that he meets as indutus panno rubeo optimi coloris. This
is not a contradiction, as Buddhist robes can vary greatly in color, and the same habit can be both
red and saffron: Itinerarium 24.5, 26.10–26.11, 29.47 (SF, 229, 237, 269–70).
58
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 21.2 (SF, 460–61); Mandeville, Travels 16.90.1–19; statues of
St. Christopher the giant serve as the standard when contrasting the size of idols in Asia to the larg-
est sculptures in Europe.
59
John of Marignolli, Relatio 509.6 (SF, 548); Polo, Description of the World 2.34 (Ronchi,
Milione, 104.1–6; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 104). Odoric takes a boat to this monastery,
possibly Lingyin Temple or another monastery in the West Lake area: Odoric of Pordenone, Rela-
tio 23.1, 23.5–23.8 (SF, 463, 465–67).
60
The Sensin, unlike most Chinese monks, eat only bran porridge, drink only wine, sleep on
mats, wear black and blue habits instead of red or yellow, and worship fire and female idols,
instead of the normal idols of Cathay, using a different worship technique. Presumably, Polo’s
comparison is based on the division between Daoists and Buddhists: Polo, Description of the
World 1.61 (Ronchi, Milione, 75.34–41; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 75).
61
“Sunt multe septe ydolatrarum diversa credentium et sunt multi religiosi de diversis septis,
diversos habitus habentes, et sunt multo maioris austeritatis et observantie quam religiosi latini”:
John of Montecorvino, Epistolae 3.6 (SF, 354). Montecorvino thought Chinese monks were more
ascetic than Latin monks. The friar had noticed differences between Confucians, Daoists, and Bud-
dhists, or between different sects of Buddhism or Daoism (e.g., Quanzhen, Zhengyi). The word
secta should probably be read for septa, although perhaps the more difficult manuscript reading

religion (lex).”62 Montecorvino must mean that their paganism does not count
as a lex in his understanding of the term. He applies a similar contrast between
religion and mere idolatry again when stating that the Indian idolaters have no
religion (leggie) or scriptures (lettera, libri).63 Their idolatry is a negation of
expected religious patterns: the Indians have no burial (only cremations with
music), no knowledge of sin, no fixed time for daily worship nor annual liturgi-
cal calendar, nor even any temples (merely “houses of idols”).64 Montecorvino
evidently had clear expectations about what qualified as a lex. While the Chi-
nese had these qualities, Indian and Central Asian worshippers did not. For
Montecorvino, scripture, monasticism, inhumation, and a liturgical cycle are
the chief marks of a lex. Montecorvino’s division between religions like Chris-
tianity and the Chinese lex and religionless paganisms anticipates a similar
Reformation-era dichotomy by three centuries.65
Even among the numerous sects in Cathay, some primitive groups have no
religion (lex), like the Indians. Thus, according to Hayton, some sects worship
metal idols, some cows, some trees, nature, the sun, moon, and stars. Indeed,
some of these sects have no faith or religion ( fidem vel legem) at all, but live
like beasts.66 Polo mentions a similar group, which only worships the family
should stand (i.e., saeptum, a religious enclosure, presumably referring to a monastery or temple).
On saeptum as a religious enclosure, see Cassiodorus, Variae 2.11.2, 3.47.1, ed. A. Fridh, CCSL
96 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1973). The monastic observentiae of the Chinese and their similarity to
Christian monasticism appear in other authors as well: “alias vita illorum in religiosis moribus et
oracionibus contenta et ieiuniis, si essent in vera fide, excederet omnem observanciam et continen-
ciam nostram” (John of Marignolli, Relatio 509.6 [SF, 548]; Polo, Description of the World 1.61
(Ronchi, Milione, 75.27–41; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 75).
62
“Pueros filios paganorum . . . qui nullam adhuc cognoscebant legem”: John of Montecor-
vino, Epistolae 2.4 (SF, 347–48); Montecorvino purchased forty boys between the ages of seven
and eleven in order to baptize them, teach them Latin, and form them into a monastic choir. Since
Montecorvino never mentions being able to speak Chinese, only Uighur and Persian, these slave
boys were likely slaves from Central Asia: John of Montecorvino, Epistolae 2.9, 3.1 (SF, 350–
52). Indeed, probably none of the mendicant missionaries knew Chinese. The friars preached
through two interpreters, though no source tells us what languages these translators used. Perhaps
one translated from Latin into Uighur for the benefit of friars who had not learned Uighur (unlike
Montecorvino), while another translated the Uighur into Mandarin: Peregrine of Castello, Episto-
lae 3–4 (SF, 366–67); Pascal of Vittoria, Epistolae 2–3 (SF, 503).
63
William of Rubruck likely used these same three terms when describing Christians, Muslims,
and Tuins, as discussed below. Unfortunately, Montecorvino’s letter only survives in a later Italian
translation, so we cannot be sure about the Latin wording. However, these three words almost cer-
tainly translated their obvious Latin transliterations lex, littera, and liber. The word littera usually
means “books” rather than “letters” (elementa) in Latin. Since Montecorvino goes on to tell how
the Indians write on palm leaves, he cannot mean that they have no alphabet.
64
Montecorvino worked in southern India for roughly a year: John of Montecorvino, Epistolae
1.8–1.11 (SF, 342–43); these expected religious patterns that the Indians apparently lacked are
exactly the patterns that Latin authors describe Cathay as having.
65
See Smith, “Religion,” 269–70; Smith sees this dichotomy as central to the development of
the category of religion but wrongly suggests that it was the discovery of the Indians of the New
World that led to this idea.
66
Hayton of Gorgios, Flos 1.6 (RHCDA 2:121–22, 261–62).

ancestors, lacking gods, temples, idols, or writing.67 Religion (lex) here again
appears as an institution that not all peoples or sects (sectae) necessarily have.
Most of the Chinese, however, were straightforward polytheists, who worship
daily a divine hierarchy with an undepictable high god on top, and various
families of gods and deified men below.68
In addition to daily prayers, authors emphasize that annual public ceremo-
nies are central to worship in Cathay.69 The four main annual festivals of the
Chinese liturgical year are imperial holidays rather than pagan rites, including
the emperor’s birthday, the date of his circumcision, and most importantly
New Year’s (called “White Feast”).70 All these festivals involved the nobles
of the realm genuflecting before the emperor and even worshiping him as
“our God on earth.”71 Despite this blasphemy, John of Cora twice later indi-
cates that the emperor performs this rite out of respect for a god, implying that
the emperor is a lesser god who serves as the representative of the high god.
According to Marignolli, the New Year’s celebration focuses on burning can-
dles all night to the statue of the Virgin in the main temple in Campsay,
although the Latin author admits that the Chinese do not realize that this
image is of Mary.72
67
Polo, Description of the World 2.50 (Ronchi, Milione, 120.12–30; Moule and Pelliot,
Description, 120).
68
John of Cora mentions four main gods with another higher god above them: Book of the
Estate 2 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,” 63). According to Polo, all families in Cathay own a home
altar. At the top of the altar, they write with the name of the high god written on a placard to which
they pray and burn incense thrice daily, supplicating for spiritual blessings of wisdom and health.
The Chinese place a statue of a mere earthly god named Natigai below, along with statutes of the
god’s wife and children, whom they supplicate daily in the same way, but only for material con-
cerns. Polo thus implies a radical dichotomy between the abstraction of the high god who cannot
even be depicted and the carnality and worldliness of most Chinese idols: Polo, Description of the
World 2.34 (Ronchi, Milione, 104, Moule and Pelliot, Description, 104); William of Rubruck,
Itinerarium 24.5, 26.10–26.11, 29.47 (SF, 229, 237, 269–70).
69
Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 127 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 261–62; Odo-
ric of Pordenone, Relatio 26.6–26.8, 28.1 (SF, 474–75, 479–80); Mandeville, Travels 19.98.14–
20.
70
While Latin authors see all these feasts as Chinese, many practices that they observed in Bei-
jing (e.g., White Feast, the title “Lord on earth”) were perculiarities of the Mongol Yuan dynasty.
These practices did not exist during the earlier Song or the later Ming and were not ethnically Han.
Latin travelers, however, knew nothing of this distinction.
71
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 29.1–29.2 (SF, 479–80); Polo, Description of the World 2.14,
2.15, 2.21 (Ronchi, Milione, 87–89, 95; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 87–89, 95); John of Mar-
ignolli, Relatio 586.1 (SF, 559); John of Cora, Book of the Estate 1 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,”
60–61); Polo gives the emperor’s birthday as September 28 and says that only New Year’s Day is
a more important festival. John of Cora dates New Year’s to March 1 on the Western calendar, but
Marignolli places this feast in February, at the new moon of the first Chinese month. Polo agrees
with the February dating; for the worship of the emperor, see also El Libro del conosçimiento de
todos los reinos (The Book of Knowledge of All Kingdoms), ed. and trans. Nancy F. Marino
(Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999), 74–77.
72
“Ymago in templo de kampsay solempnissime custoditur et prima luna mensis primi, scilicet
februarii qui primus est apud kathayos, festum istud cum candelis per totam noctem solempnis-

All these festivals include gift giving, ritual music, drama, and an animal
show. All the clerics of the realm, including the Chinese monks, Muslim
imams, and the Latin friars, are required to bless the emperor and give him
gifts.73 A caste of philosophers officiates as ritual experts at these festivals,
watching the stars to determine the propitious moments for each aspect of the
ceremony.74 A defined liturgical year, then, was a hallmark of Chinese reli-
gion to Latin travelers. Their ordered cycle of devotion (both daily and
yearly), combined with their incipient henotheism, ensured that these authors
would view Chinese worship as a lex.
Montecorvino disparaged the Indian practice of cremation. Other Latin
authors, interestingly, claim that people in Cathay practice inhumation, rather
than cremation, just like the Europeans.75 Chinese mourners, indeed, inhume
expensive goods and treasures alongside the corpse.76 Jordanus even claims
that the ritual is so important to the Chinese that they frequently delay burying
their dead for years until they can afford a proper burial.77 Until they bury
the dead, they treat the corpse like a living human, and after burial the Chinese
build an image of the dead and burn incense to it on the ancestor’s birthday.78
sime celebratur anni novi”: John of Marignolli, Relatio 586.1 (SF, 559); presumably the holiday
(like Candlemas) involved a procession of the statute. If this story has any truth, it was perhaps a
statute of Guanyin. Some sixteenth-century missionaries to China briefly thought Guanyin might
be the Virgin. Japanese Catholics in the seventeenth century deliberately used the iconography of
Kannon (Guanyin) for statues of Mary.
73
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 29.6–30.2 (SF, 481–82); Polo, Description of the World 2.14
(Ronchi, Milione, 87–89; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 87–89). The word Odoric uses for a gift,
exennium, has a strong connotation in Medieval Latin of a gift given ceremonially at an annual fes-
tival. It especially refers to New Year’s gifts (the standard date for gift giving in the Latin West).
Thus, Odoric, just as John of Cora and Marignolli, probably recognized the importance of the New
Year. Gift giving certainly remains important at the Chinese New Year.
74
“Phylosophi et sapientes attendentes ad cunctas horas et puncta et cum occurrit punctum vel
hora quam ipsi phylosophi petunt, unus clamat valenter et dicit ‘debetis inclinare nostro imperatori
domino magno’”: Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 29.3–29.5 (SF, 480–81); Polo, Description of the
World 2.15, 2.32–2.33, 2.77 (Ronchi, Milione, 89, 104, 152; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 89,
104, 152); Mandeville, Travels 19.90.8–19.101.11. Polo calls these philosophers “prelates” and
describes them conducting the ritual and burning incense on behave of the people. Imperial astrol-
ogers also predict the weather and yearly events. Polo says that the population consulted with
astrologers before almost any major decision and that Chinese astrologers use complex astronomic
charts and astrolabes to cast horoscopes based around twelve animals and twelve years. Polo con-
trasts these astrologers to the Tibetan Bacsi, discussed more below.
75
While inhumation became dominant in China during the Ming and Qing, under the Yuan both
cremation and inhumation were practiced. Latin authors, however, focus on inhumation (perhaps
due to its predominance in Europe), although Polo also mentions the use of cremation.
76
John of Cora, Book of the Estate 7 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,” 67–68); Jordanus of Severac,
Mirabilia descripta 128–29, 135 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 262).
77
Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 128–29, 135 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient,
262); Jordanus implies that the splendor of Chinese burials is excessive, so that the dead are fre-
quently buried with treasure, animals, and even slaves. John of Cora mentions gold, incense, and a
cart being burned at a burial.
78
John of Cora, Book of the Estate 7 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,” 67–68); Jordanus of Severac,
Mirabilia descripta 128–29, 135 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 262). Ancestor worship also

Latins frequently remark on structural similarities between Chinese reli-

gion and Christianity. Even the Chinese hierarchy parallels the Latin Church.
The high pontiffs of Cathay wear red robes and hats like a cardinal’s.79 The
emperor gives great honor to the Grant Trucins (probably tuinus maximus in
the original Latin), who serves as high bishop over the lex of Cathay like the
Pope does in the Latin West.80
Marignolli is not the only Latin author to suggest that the Chinese are
semi-Christian without knowing it. Carpini and Benedict claim the Chinese,
though pagans, have the Old and New Testament (along with their own scrip-
tures), hagiographies of the fathers (although some of their saints are unique
to Cathay), church-like houses for fixed times of prayer, hermits, and almsgiv-
ing. They are monotheists who honor Christ and believe in eternal life.81 The
emperor and people of Cathay show great respect to Christians.82 The emperor
gives many gifts to the Christians, requires that they pray for him, and even lets
them preach in the idolatrous churches.83 Many idolaters attend these sermons
appears in Polo, Description of the World 2.22, 50 (Ronchi, Milione, 95, 120.12–30; Moule and
Pelliot, Description, 95, 120); burials cannot occur within the city of Khanbaliq, nor can prostitutes
work there, because the capital city is holy.
79
Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 127 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 261–62).
80
The Trucins is shaved and wears a red hat and habit. He holds sovereignty over all the clergy
and religious of his religion (loy, presumably for lex) in doctrine and practice: John of Cora, Book
of the Estate 2 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,” 62–63). The origin of the name Trucins is unknown.
Since John’s original Latin is lost, this title is likely a mistake by a fourteenth-century French trans-
lator or scribe for tuinus, an Asian monk. In Gothic scripts, tuinus would have been written as
seven straight minims between the T and S. Trucins, similarly, has five minims in the center of the
word plus the R and C, which are single minims with a small headstroke. Scribal confusion would
be easy, especially as tuinus was a rare word in Latin that a copyist may have never have encoun-
tered before. On the term tuinus in Rubruck, see below.
81
“Kitai quamuis pagani sint habent tamen novum et vetus testamentum et litteras speciales
vitas patrum multas et heremitas et domos quasi ecclesias in quibus orants statuto tempore. Dicunt
pretera se habere sanctos speciales quosdam. Hii unum deum colunt et credunt in dominum Iesum
Christum, credunt etiam vitam eternam. Elemosinas dant largas et reverentur christianos licet
minime baptizentus”: Benedict of Poland, Historia Tartarorum 9–10, in The Vinland Map and the
Tartar Relation, ed. George D. Painter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 60–63;
Carpini, Ystoria Mongalorum 5.9–5.10 (SF, 56–58); Carpini’s account differs slightly, as it claims
the Chinese honor (honorant) rather than believe in Christ and mentions that they “honor our
scripture” (scripturam nostram honorant et reverentur). Thus, according to Carpini, the Chinese
do not believe Christ is God and have a significantly different scripture. Some translators have pre-
ferred “an old and new testament” to “the Old and New Testament,” but the contrasts between
novum et vetus testamentum and litteras speciales and between vitas patrum and sanctos speciales
reveal that these diplomats thought the Chinese had additional sacred texts, rather than totally dif-
ferent ones.
82
John of Montecorvino was supposedly so beloved that the idolaters mourned him greatly and
carried off his clothes as relics: John of Cora, Book of the Estate 8, 10 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,”
68–71).
83
John of Cora calls these churches vritanes, perhaps connected to a Sanskrit word for a Bud-
dhist monastery: Book of the Estate 10 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,” 70–71); Odoric of Pordenone,
Relatio 23.5 (SF, 465–66); Polo, Description of the World 2.6 (Ronchi, Milione, 81; Moule and
Pelliot, Description, 81).

and give alms to the friars, though seemingly without converting.84 The Chi-
nese, then, seem quasi-Christians, with temples that are almost churches, with
similar scripture, with saints that are nearly the same as normal ones, with
respect but not worship for Christ. Their lex is almost the lex Christiana.
While medieval travelers to China probably did not know Pseudo-Clem-
ent’s admiration of China, these later writers did demonstrate a similarly high
degree of appreciation for Chinese religion. In Cathay, the clergy and monks
behave like Christians; their emperor and people honor the Christians; even
their doctrine, apart from reincarnation, seems vaguely Christian, with an
honored Virgin and a high abstract God who is not depicted with idols. All the
religious aspects that Montecorvino claims India lacked (scripture, monasti-
cism, inhumation, and a liturgical calendar), Latin authors purport to discover
in China. In light of these similarities, the Latin writers declare that the Chi-
nese possess a religion (lex), unlike many other Asian peoples.
In the Western mind, most of the religious practices of the Chinese were
relatively nonoffensive annual holidays with little that looks dangerously hea-
then. Implicit in all this praise of Cathay is hope that trade, alliance, and mis-
sions could thrive there. Most of these authors, after all, were mendicant
friars, writing reports back to Europe appealing for more clergy to be sent.
The survival of the dioceses they were building depended either on mass con-
version or on attracting Latin merchants and clerics to emigrate. But Latin
authors were genuinely impressed as well, for Chinese worship seemed to
mirror those aspects of their own religious experience that they considered
central. Chinese religiosity was legible to Westerners; it could be understood
(or perhaps, misunderstood) using the categories of the Latin Church. Since
Cathay was already had a lex and was almost Christian unwittingly, only the
distance and the scarcity of missionaries prevented the empire from becoming
another version of what the Latin West thought it already had in the legendary
land of Prester John: a far-off Christian empire.
v. in the land of the cannibals

Unlike China, Tibet is rarely discussed in late medieval travelogues, presum-
ably because travelers after 1300 preferred the sea route across the Indian
Ocean rather than the land route across Central Asia that Rubruck and Carpini
had used (the land route was no longer safe).85 The only widely reported fact
84
Andrew of Perugia referenced such syncretism: Epistolae 5–6 (SF, 376).
85
“Tibet,” in this article, refers to all areas of the Central Asia within the Tibetan sphere of
influence, as judged by partially overlapping criteria: (1) the territory where Lamaist Buddhism
was dominant during the High Middle Ages; (2) areas where a Tibeto-Burman language was used;
(3) the Himalayan highlands; (4) the former territory of the Tibetan empire of the seventh through

on the Tibetans, in Latin literature, is that they are pagans who supposedly eat
the corpses of their family members.86 Odoric (who was copied by Mande-
ville) is an exception, for he claims to have visited Tibet personally.87 He
describes Tibet as a fertile land with a royal city in which blood cannot be
shed, out of reverence for a great idol. In that city lives the Albassi, the pope
of the Tibetans, who distributes all the benefices of the realm.88 In addition to
funerary cannibalism, Odoric claims the Tibetans also feed corpses to birds
after a ceremony involving priests, monks, and magician minstrels, as well as
a large crowd of family and friends.89 Despite his distinctions then, Odoric
follows other Western accounts by associating Tibet with deviant burial prac-
tices and the rejection of inhumation.
ninth centuries; and (5) the later territory of the Tibetan empire of the seventeenth century. “Tibet”
does not merely mean the province of contemporary China that goes by that name. Certain areas
outside this province’s borders, such as northern Kashmir, Bhutan, southern Xinjiang province,
and Western parts of Qinghai and Sichuan provinces, are therefore included; for the difficulty
defining the geography of Tibet, see Matthew T. Kapstein, The Tibetans (Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2006), 1–11, 18–26; Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Wash-
ington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 41–53, 142–49.
86
John of Plano Carpini, Ystoria Mongalorum 5.14 (SF, 60–61); Benedict of Poland, Historia
Tartarorum 19; Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 33.5 (SF, 486); Polo, Description of the World 1.61
(Ronchi, Milione, 75.19–29; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 75); William of Rubruck, Itinerar-
ium 26.2–26.4, 29.50 (SF, 233–34, 271). Tibet appears under a variety of names in Latin literature
(e.g., Burithabet, Tebec, Tangut).
87
Some scholars doubt that Odoric visited Tibet, but his report is based on some Westerner tra-
veler’s account, even if he himself may not have been that traveler. Odoric claims Tibet (Tibot) is
in India but under the rule of the Yuan emperor: Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 33.1 (SF, 484–85).
Mandeville repeats Odoric’s stories of Tibet, but he locates them on an island in Cathay: Travels
24.132.6–24.133.25.
88
“In hac civitate non audet aliqua persona effundere sanguinem alicuius hominis vel animalis
et hoc ob reverenciam unius ydoli . . . in esta civitate moratur. . . . Albassi id est papa . . . iste est
capud omnium illorum ydolatrorum quibus dat et distribuit secundum morem suum omnia illa
beneficia qui ibi habet”: Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 33.1 (SF, 485); cf. John of Cora, Book of
the Estate 2 (Jacquet, “Livre de l’estat,” 62–63). The Albassi of the Tibetans and the Trucins of
the Chinese, even assuming that they refer to the same figure (hardly clear), cannot be the Dalai
Lama, since both this position and the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism postdate 1350. Instead,
they may refer to the leader of one of the other three Tibetan schools (the Karmapa of the Kagyu
school visited the Yuan court at times): Kapstein, Tibetans, 110–26, 131–33; Antonio Garcı́a
Espada, “Fray Odorico y el Karmapa: El Tibet de los viajeros medievales,” Medievalismo 9
(1999): 83–103.
89
The priest butchers the corpse while the crowd sings and prays around. Pieces of the corpse
are fed to birds of prey. Supposedly, the Tibetans believe that the birds will only eat the body of a
righteous man, for the birds are divine angels bearing the soul to paradise: Odoric of Pordenone,
Relatio 33.2–33.5 (SF, 485–86). Odoric speaks of sacerdotes et religiosos omnes que ystriones.
Since ystrio is also the term he uses of the minstrels at the Chinese festival with telekinetic powers,
the term had a magicoreligious meaning for him: Relatio 30.1–30.2 (SF, 482). When Odoric con-
trasts these different types of Tibetan clerics, he may refer to the distinction between hereditary
B€on or Nyingmapa priests and Buddhist monks. Burial rites in Tibet do sometimes include the
feeding of the corpse to birds. Cremation is more popular, and astrology is central to these rites (cf.
Polo’s description of Tangut burial below): Kapstein, Tibetans, 213–37, 245–55; Samuel, Civi-
lized Shamans, 271–89.

Although he never traveled there, William of Rubruck provides a wealth

of information on Tibetan religion.90 Rubruck describes Tibetan Buddhists as
Tuins (tuini), a flexible term that is sometimes a synonym for idolater and
could be used of a wide array of Buddhists across Tibet, Central Asia, and
Mongolia (but not, seemingly, of Buddhists in Cathay or of the Uighurs).91
Rubruck envisions Tuins (tuini) as a priestly caste of idolaters who serve as a
competing religion (lex) with their own written scripture (littere, libri) in a
disputation against Christians and Muslims (Rubruck’s language parallels
Montecorvino’s above).92 Tuins apparently disagree among themselves on
the nature of God and the soul and have many secret doctrines, but all are
polytheists and all believe in dualism and reincarnation.93 William of
Rubruck’s Tuin disputant admits that one supreme god reigns over all others
but denies that this god created evil or is omnipotent.
Rubruck describes Tuin worship by providing a long comparison between
the rites that are common to all “idolaters,” who are essentially equivalent to
the Tuins and those specific to the separate sect of the Uighurs.94 Both the
90
William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 24.2–25.10, 33.11–34.1 (SF, 227–32, 293–98).
91
The etymology of tuinus is debated, but the dominant theory is that the word is a Turko-
Mongol term for a monk derived from the Chinese daoren, a man of the way. Rubruck is not the
only Westerner to use this term for Buddhists, for the Armenian king Het’um I calls a Buddhist
monk a toyin, obviously the same word, and John of Cora refers to the Trucins. Rubruck uses tui-
nus as an ethnoreligious category in opposition to Uighur: Het’um I, The Journey of Het’um; John
Andrew Boyle, “The Journey of Het’um I, King of Little Armenia, to the Court of the Great Khan
Mongke,” Central Asiatic Journal 9, no. 3 (1964): 187–88; Jackson, Mongols and the West, 176;
Beinorius, “Buddhism in the Early European Imagination,” 11–12.
92
“Vos estis hic christiani, sarraceni et tuini, et unusquisque vestrum dicit quod lex sua sit
melior et sue littere hoc est libri veriores”: William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 33.5–33.7 (SF, 291–
92). Interreligious debates at the Mongol court between Daoists, Christians, and Buddhists also
appear in Asian sources; Kapstein, Tibetans, 113–14; littera here in Rubruck and in Montecor-
vino, as in Carpini and Benedict, means “sacred scripture”; cf. Benedict of Poland, Historia Tar-
tarorum 10; John of Plano Carpini, Ystoria Mongalorum 5.9–5.10 (SF, 56–58); William of
Rubruck, Itinerarium 26.14, 28.12, 33.5–33.7 (SF, 238, 248, 291–92); Michele Bacci, “Cult-
Images and Religious Ethnology: The European Exploration of Medieval Asia and the Discovery
of New Iconic Religions,” Viator 36 (2005): 353; Richard Fox Young, “Deus Unus or Dei Plures
Sunt? The Function of Inclusivism in the Buddhist Defense of Mongol Folk Religion against Wil-
liam of Rubruck (1254),” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26, no. 1 (1989): 100–137; Tuin garb
was similar enough to Franciscan that Rubruck could be mistaken for a Tuin if he was clean
shaven. The Tuins probably appeared more like Latin priests to Rubruck and the other Westerners
than did Muslim imams or Nestorians. Both the Tuins and the Latins wore robes of particular col-
ors depending on their order, lived in large monasteries, and rang bells when it was time for com-
munal prayer.
93
William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 33.11–33.13 (SF, 293–94); the Tuins believe each region
has its own gods. Tuins also consider the nature of God to be a less important question than the ori-
gin of evil or the destiny of the soul after death.
94
Thus, for example, Rubruck at the disputation mentions both a Tuin debater (who stays firm
in his paganism) and an old priest of the Uighur sect (who converts to Christanity): William of
Rubruck, Itinerarium 33.18–33.22 (SF, 294–97); Rubruck feels no qualm about saying the Mon-
gols follow something like Uighur religion but apparently considers it rude to suggest that the

Tuins and the Uighurs follow a religion in Rubruck’s opinion, even if he pre-
fers the lex of the Uighurs.95 Indeed, Rubruck says that the Uighurs may be
Christian heretics (christianie sed ex defectu doctrine omitterent) and that
they answer theological questions as if they are Christians.96 Rubruck’s depic-
tion, though, makes it apparent that both the Tuins and the Uighurs were Bud-
dhists (Rubruck did not realize this).97
Rubruck’s contrast between Tuins and Uighurs provides a basic picture of
Tuin practice. The Tuins worship while kneeling, facing north; they lay out
their temples on the compass points and fill them with bells to mark the times
of prayer and with gold idols, some of incredible size.98 Their priests shave their
head and beard and wear saffron robes. They live together chastely, with over a
hundred priests at some temples. Their main activities are reading and using
prayer beads, for they expect a reward from god for their deeds. Rubruck, then,
criticizes the Tuins as an inferior lex not only to orthodox Christianity but also
to the Nestorians, to Islam, and to the Uighur religion. Not surprisingly, he
claims that the Tuins lost the disputation. Yet even in the midst of this denigra-
tion, he admits that their lex is a rival to Christianity, with many similar prac-
tices, which could attract converts if Christian missionaries do not openly con-
front it. Tuins possessed scriptures, a monastic observance, a high god, and set
hours for prayer. Their qualifications as a religion were not in doubt.
Polo supplies the longest medieval account of Tibetan religion. While the
Venetian never visited Tibet, he did encounter Lamaist Buddhism elsewhere.
Polo describes the mountainous region of the northern India subcontinent (e.g.,
Kashmir, the Swat valley) where Tantric Buddhism first developed, as well as
areas in modern Tibet and Yunnan province, as filled with magicians called
Bacsi, who use magic to control the weather, move cups at feasts by telekine-
sis, enter shamanistic trances, and make idols speak.99 The connection between
Mongols are Tuins: William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 25.9, 34.1–34.2 (SF, 232, 297–98); “Tuin”
and “idolater” are often used as synonyms in William’s account.
95
William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 24.1–24.4, 25.4–26.1 (SF, 227–28, 230–33); in Rubruck’s
description, the Uighur sect differs from the Tuins as the Uighurs wear a different habit (which
looks like the clothes of the French). They are monotheists, have crosses, and do not make statues
of their god. Rubruck implies by the contrast that the Tuins are polytheists and idolaters. Rubruck
prefers to use the term ydolatria to refer to Uighur houses of worship but templum for the shrines
of idolaters.
96
While William at first suggests that the Uighurs are heretics, he later indicates that they just
absorbed parts of Christian doctrine through years of living alongside Nestorians and Muslims:
William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 24.1–24.2, 26.1 (SF, 227, 233).
97
Rubruck may also have met Manichaeans among the Uighurs and wrongly assumed that the
Uighur Buddhists and Manichaeans were a single sect. Since Rubruck claims the Tuins are dual-
ists, he probably failed to see any difference between Buddhists and Manichaeans.
98
William of Rubruck, Itinerarium 24.4–25.4 (SF, 227–30).
99
Polo, Description of the World 1.30–1.31, 1.61, 2.46, 2.50 (Ronchi, Milione, 48–49, 75.19–
29, 116, 120.12–30; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 48–49, 75, 116, 120). Polo links Tibet and
Kashmir as two related nations of idolaters. Odoric’s ystriones and Polo’s Bacsi should probably

Tibetan priests and magic is so strong that Polo sometimes refers to them as
incantatores rather than sacerdotes. According to Polo, idolatry first devel-
oped in Kashmir, spreading out to other nations later.100 Polo’s meaning is
unclear. Perhaps he thought that pagans had earlier worshipped false gods
without images, until the use of idols spread from Kashmir. Certainly though,
Polo conceived of idolatry as a particular form of paganism, different from
ordinary polytheism. Just as Rubruck could use idolater as a synonym for Tuin,
so Polo can use the word to mean a particular religion originating in Tibet.
These Tibetan lands are filled with monasteries and hermits, who are
revered by the people. These ascetics practice celibacy, fast, and avoid drink
and meat, as killing of an animal is forbidden.101 On the other hand, Polo
claims that the lay population of Tibet (Tebet), far from being chaste, consid-
ers fornication to be pleasing to the gods.102 The Yuan emperor employs at
his court some sorcerers from Tibet (Tebet) and Kashmir (Chescemir), whom
Polo castigates for their demonic arts and disheveled appearance.103
Polo is more informative about the religion in Tangut, which refers to the
Tibeto-Burman-speaking people of northwestern China.104 The monasteries
be equated (both, for instance, move cups by telekinesis). Bacsi likely derives from a Mongol pro-
nounciation of bhikkhu (a Buddhist monk); Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 30.1–30.2 (SF, 482).
100
Tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana) did indeed come to Tibet from the Swat Valley through the
mission work of Padmasambhava. Islamic authors also had the idea of India as the country of ori-
gin of idolatry: Yohanan Friedman, “Medieval Muslim Views of Indian Religion,” Journal of the
American Oriental Society 95, no. 2 (1975): 214–21.
101
Polo, Description of the World 1.31 (Ronchi, Milione, 49; Moule and Pelliot, Description,
49).
102
115); Polo is perhaps alluding to the prevalence of polygamy among the Tibetans; Kapstein, Tibe-
tans, 194–99.
103
Polo, Description of the World 1.61, 2.50 (Ronchi, Milione, 75.19–29, 120.12–20; Moule
and Pelliot, Description, 75, 120). These Bacsi perform astrology, appease the spirits annually
with a libation of mare’s milk, and make sacrifices of boiled animals and incense to guarantee fer-
tility and health. Polo describes a rite that these sorcerers perform in order to cure a man who is
sick because he has sinned against an idol, mentioning the use of animal sacrifice, libation, song,
dance, and feasting. On the role of divination, shamanism, and propitiatory rites in Tibetan reli-
gion, see Kapstein, Tibetans, 207–15, 266–68; Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 161–65, 193–96.
Bacsi also appear in the account of Ricoldo of Montecroce, a Dominican missionary to the Il-Khan
court. Ricoldo, writing around 1290, mentions that the Il-Khans honored the baxites above all
other clerics. According to Ricoldo, the baxites are Indian wise men who work demonic magic,
predict the future, and levitate. While they are polytheists who worship black stone idols, the bax-
ites also recognize one high god over all. The baxites claim that they were of the same rite and sect
(de eodem ritu et secta) as Christians, but Ricoldo disagrees: Ricoldo of Montecroce, Liber pere-
grinationis 10, in Peregrinatores medii aevi quatuor, ed. J. C. M. Laurent (Leipzig: Hinrichs Bib-
liopolia, 1874), 117–18. On the Buddhist presence in the Middle East during the early years of
Il-Khan rule, see Samuel M. Grupper, “The Buddhist Sanctuary-Vihara of Labnasagut and the Il-
Qan H€ uleg€
u: An Overview of Il-Qanid Buddhsim and Related Matters,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii
Aevi 13 (2004): 5–78.
104
Polo, Description of the World 1.40–1.41, 1.44 (Ronchi, Milione, 58–59, 62; Moule and
Pelliot, Description, 58–59, 62). Idols could be made of wood, stone, or clay, though all are

of Tangut are filled with idols of diverse sizes, postures, and materials, each
of which receives prayers and boiled animal sacrifices on its annual festival in
exchange for protecting children during the year.105 Astrologers calculate the
proper time for cremations, lest misfortune curse the family.106 While the
family waits, they feed the dead ancestor with meat fumes. At the funeral
itself, they burn meat, liquor, and paper depictions of possessions for the
ancestor’s use in the next world.
If Western travelers felt that religion in Yuan China centered on large-scale
annual festivals, then the key element in Tibetan religion was magic. Polo in
particular, time and again, emphasizes the magical component of Lamaism,
speaking about ceremonies to appease demons or control the natural world.
Odoric mentions the role of magician-minstrels. Even the Tibetan burial rites
and ritual cannibalism probably struck Latin Christians as having necromantic
connotations. Certainly, their rejection of inhumation was anathema to Latin
viewers. As Rubruck indicates, the Tibetans had all the key elements of a lex:
a hierarchy of professional priests and monks, written scripture, a set liturgical
calendar. Odoric, Rubruck, and Polo all highlighted aspects that reminded
them of Christianity. Yet Tibetan religion is not a belief system that wins
much respect from medieval authors, and they unquestionably disparage it as
magical with a hostility that they do not show toward religion in Cathay or
even toward the Uighurs. To these Western travelers, thus, not all false reli-
gions were equal.
Exactly why these Latin authors were so harsh toward the Tibetan lex,
however, is less clear. Rubruck’s description of the religion of the Tuins
shares much in common with Western discussions of religion at the Yuan
court (not surprisingly, since the Yuan rulers had adopted Tibetan Buddhism),
yet the missionary criticizes the Tuins with a negativity that no traveler dis-
plays toward Cathay. Latin travelers came from a land where both church and
state were interdependent hierarchies and expected similar structure in the
East. By integrating their religion with the organization and imperial pag-
eantry of the Chinese state, the Yuan endowed their lex with a legitimacy (in
the eyes of Latin travelers) that those same worship patterns could not have
had on the steppe.
Moreover, the remoteness of Tibet encouraged these views. With the pos-
sible exception of Odoric, none of the Western authors who described Tibet
gilded. The large idols are usually recumbent, while smaller idols stand around like disciples ven-
erating them; both types are worshipped.
105
58); Polo believes that the Tanguts feed their idols by boiling meat beneath it but divide the actual
body of the sacrifice between the priest and the worshipper; cf. the Chinese style of nonanimal sac-
rifice in Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 21.2 (SF, 460–61).
106
Polo claims that taboo days are central to the Tangut calendar: Polo, Description of the
World 1.40, 1.44 (Ronchi, Milione, 58, 62; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 58, 62).

ever went there. With the sea route dominating, it was unlikely than any
would. Tibet was isolated enough to make complementing it unnecessary.
Instead, it could serve as a locus of whatever Westerners imagined about
magic and idolatry. One late medieval fictitious travelogue, the Libro del con-
osçimiento, has a positive view on Tibet (Trimet), calling it a blessed land
inhabited by learned and noble men who live according to their religion (por
ley) and die when they are over two hundred years old.107 Tibet, as a remote
land where no one traveled, could be praised as a paradise or condemned as a
domain of black magic, without anyone bothering to check.
vi. the many indias

While most Latins present China and Tibet as having a fairly uniform national
religious culture, they depict India as a land of multiple kingdoms containing
Muslims, heretical Christians, and numerous pagan cults worshipping every-
thing from idols to fire, snakes, trees, and cows.108 Burial practice seems to be
the chief way that Latin authors tell Indian pagans apart. Tellingly, no groups
in India inhume their dead. Most Indians cremate. The wives of noble men
joyously burn themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre for the sake of
glory, love, and eternal life with their husband, and this action is considered
virtuous.109 Other Indian pagans, however, who worship fire and believe in
two principles of good/light and evil/dark, refuse to burn their dead, instead
leaving them in roofless towers to be eaten by birds.110 The Dumbri eat their
107
El Libro del conosçimiento, 82–83; the Libro often assigns both learning and religion
(sçiençia, ley) to a people, treating these as interrelated elements of culture (cf. 84–85).
108
In some areas, the inhabitants worship the first thing they see on awakening; Polo, Descrip-
tion of the World 3.9 (Ronchi, Milione, 166.8–10; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 166); Odoric of
Pordenone, Relatio 7.5 (SF, 423); Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 45–46, 56–59, 63
(Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 250–52); Hayton of Gorgios, Flos 1.6 (RHCDA 2:125–26, 265–
66); John of Marignolli, Relatio 509.1–509.2 (SF, 546–47); Conti, De varietate fortunae 561–81
(Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 148–51); Mandeville, Travels 15.72.28–15.73.7. On medieval travelers in
India, see James D. Ryan, “European Travelers before Columbus—the Fourteenth Century’s Dis-
covery of India,” Catholic Historical Review 89, no. 4 (1993): 648–70, and “Missionary Saints of
the High Middle Ages: Martyrdom, Popular Veneration and Canonization,” Catholic Historical
Review 90, no. 1 (2004): 1–28.
109
Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 45–46, 56–59 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient,
250–51); Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 10.4 (SF, 441); Polo, Description of the World 3.17
(Ronchi, Milione, 174.40–74; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 174); Conti, De varietate fortunae
63–67, 481–501 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 84–85, 140–43); Jordanus feels this practice is terrible,
but he also seems to think it is unfair that husbands never burn themselves after their wives die.
110
Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 47–48 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 250–51);
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 8.21, 15.4 (SF, 435, 452). Certain manuscripts of Odoric claim that
the pagans of Thane place their dead on fields to be eaten by birds and beasts: The Travels of Friar
Odoric, trans. Henry Yule (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 78–79; this is obviously a group
of Parsees (Zoroastrians), who immigrated to India from Iran around the eighth century and settled
in centers on the coast of what is now southern Gujarat and northern Maharashtra (e.g., Sanjan,
Navrasi, Surat, Thane).

dead and have no idols at all.111 One area of India supposedly practices the rit-
ual euthanasia of the terminally ill. Even as he condemns this practice, though,
Odoric admits that the Indians who practice this consider it to be not just nor-
mal but pious.112 Only the pious descendant euthanizes and cannibalizes his
ancestor to keep him from the worse pain of a slow death by illness, inhuma-
tion, or being eaten by worms.
The Indians use idols in the appearance of all kinds of people and animals
(including a half-man/half-cow idol).113 However, they believe in one omnip-
otent creator god over all the others, and this god has a set appearance.114
Conti claims some Indian idolaters follow a religion of a triune god.115 Indian
idols can be large and expensive, made of gold, ivory, and gems.116 The tem-
111
Multiple travelers suggest a demonic origin to Indian religion: Jordanus of Severac, Mirabi-
lia descripta 49, 99 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 251, 257); Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 19.2
(SF, 459).
112
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 18.1–18.4 (SF, 455–57); Mandeville, Travels 15.84.24–
15.85.8; Polo, Description of the World 3.10 (Ronchi, Milione, 168; Moule and Pelliot, Descrip-
tion, 168); an astrologer priest of a talking idol suffocates the sick, while ritual minstrels (istriones)
sing. The corpse is then eaten to prevent worms from consuming it. The whole event is called a
wedding (nupcias), implying that this act united the dead soul with his descendents.
113
Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 62 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 252); Odoric
of Pordenone, Relatio 10.3, 11.1–11.3, 16.1 (SF, 441–43, 453); Polo, Description of the World
3.17 (Ronchi, Milione, 174.40–74; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 174); Mandeville, Travels
15.72.28–15.73.24. The diverse shapes of Indian gods differ from the human appearance of Chi-
nese gods. Polo claims Japan also has animal-shaped gods: Polo, Description of the World 3.4
(Ronchi, Milione, 161.1–9; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 161). Gothic art depicts idols either as
classical statuary (usually a naked male standing on a column in contrapposto) or as a chimerical
figure mixing human forms with animal characteristics. Mandeville recognizes this division, claim-
ing that simulacra means images of things which appear in nature (e.g., a human, an animal), but
ydola refers to chimeric images. Illustrations in travelogues prefer to depict the idols of India, Tar-
taria, and Cathay as classicizing sculptures. Muslims, on the other hand, are often depicted as
worshipping chimeras. Descriptions of idols in travelogues though suggest a wider array of pos-
tures (e.g., sitting on a throne, lying on the ground, venerating) and figures (e.g., men, women, ani-
mals, chimeras) than the visual evidence: Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-
Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 65–71, 129–62; Debra
Higgs Strickland, “Text, Image, and Contradiction in the Divisement dou monde,” in Marco Polo
and the Encounter of East and West, ed. Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Amilcare Iannucci (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2008), 41–43, 50–51.
114
Partha Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 1–16; Mitter emphasizes that medieval authors con-
sidered India filled with monsters (true) and suggests that this connection led medieval travelers to
describe Indian idols as monstrous (unproven). As evidence, Mitter misindentifies as Indian gods
depictions of Muslim idols in the Livre des merveilles and cites Odoric’s story about a demon even
though this demon is not an image, is described as human shaped, and is located in Tartary, rather
than in India. In fact, it was the sixteenth century, rather than the Middle Ages, that associated
the images of Indian gods with monsters.
115
“Orant iunctis manibus ‘Deus trinus et lex eius eadem nos tuere’”: Conti, De varietate fortu-
nae 224–28 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 106–7); Bracciolini thinks that this triune god may be the
Christian one. More likely, Conti heard prayers to the Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva).
116
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 11.1–11.2 (SF, 442–43); Conti, De varietate fortunae 561–
81 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 148–51).

ples housing them, similarly, are often painted with images and filled with
flowers. Idols also serve a judicial role, since Indians make oaths and undergo
versions of the ordeal of hot water and hot iron in front of these idols.117
One particularly grand idol, in an Indian temple in the Carnatic, is a pil-
grimage site comparable to St. Peter’s in Rome. Pilgrims travel from all
around, bearing wealthy offerings, and setting up deliberate barriers to their
movement, such as prostrating every few steps or stabbing themselves with a
knife, in order to sanctify their pilgrimage.118 Temple worship involves a pro-
fessional priesthood, music, food offerings, ritual washings, prostrations,
incense, candles, and oft-repeated mantras.119 Western travelers note that in
many cities in India (e.g., Quilon) parents vow to give their virgin children to
temples to serve as musicians, servants, or even human sacrifices. Latin Chris-
tians contrast this ritual with the European practice of child oblation to a reli-
gious order.120 In addition to widow burning and ritual euthanasia, ritual sui-
cide is common in Indian religion. The annual procession of the idol on the
anniversary of its making is an especially important time for ritual suicide.121
While most Latin travelers simply mention priests and vowed temple ser-
vants, Polo and Conti list multiple groups of religious professionals. Polo
describes the Ciugui, naked vegetarian ascetics who avoid killing all crea-
117
Conti, De varietate fortunae 670–85 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 160–61); the Latin Church
condemned trial by ordeal in 1215. By the fifteenth century, Conti is able to act shocked at a cus-
tom that his own ancestors had practiced two hundred years before.
118
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 11.1–11.3 (SF, 442–43).
119
Jordanus, for instance, claims that a white-shirted temple priest and an assisting cleric per-
form a series of genuflections before an idol, light candles, and offer food and a libation. While
Jordanus considers much of this ritual alien, he notices that the clothes and genuflections of the
priest are similar to Christian rites: Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 61 (Gadrat, Une
image de l’Orient, 252); Polo, Description of the World 3.17 (Ronchi, Milione, 174.40–74; Moule
and Pelliot, Description, 174); Conti, De varietate fortunae 561–81 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 148–
51).
120
“Huic idolo ita homines et mulieres vovent suos filios et filias dare sicut homines et mulieres
vovent hic suos filios et filias alicui religioni”; Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 10.3 (SF, 441); Conti,
De varietate fortunae 573–90 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 150–53); Polo, Description of the World
3.17 (Ronchi, Milione, 174.40–74; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 174); Larner, Marco Polo and
the Discovery of the World, 9; Mandeville, Travels 15.75.10–23, 15.86.14–15.87.4.
121
In these processions, the crowds carry the idol through the city on a chariot. After fattening
themselves up for over a year and beautifying themselves with flowers and perfume, those who
have promised suicide lead these processions. Nobles, pilgrims, and virgin singers follow. At the
end, the vowed behead themselves before the idol as a sacrifice or let themselves be crushed by the
wheels of the chariot. They are later revered as holy men because of these actions. Jordanus com-
pares these processions to Rogationtide processions carrying the Madonna: Jordanus of Severac,
Mirabilia descripta 84 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 256); see Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio
8.23–8.24, 11.3–11.5 (SF, 437–38, 443–44); Conti, De varietate fortunae 561–81 (Bracciolini,
De l’Inde, 148–51); Polo mentions vows of ritual suicide, though for criminals: Polo, Description
of the World 2.17 (Ronchi, Milione, 174.40–74; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 174); Odoric of
Pordenone, Relatio 11.3–11.5 (SF, 443–44); Mandeville, Travels 15.76.20–15.77.23.

tures, even insects, as they believe everything has a soul.122 He also speaks of
the Brahmins, seemingly learning the term from use rather than from Roman
literature.123 Instead of an ethnicity, priesthood, or group of philosophers,
Polo thinks the Brahmins are lay merchants who strictly follow certain food
laws. He compares them to the European Patarins (i.e., Cathars). Conti’s
Brahmins, on the other hand, are an aristocracy of virtuous philosopher-astrol-
ogers with magical powers.124 Conti also mentions the Bachali, a class of
married vegetarian priests whose main job seems to be officiating at funerals
and encouraging widow burnings.125 Conti contrasts these two groups of reli-
gious professionals in order to defend the philosophic Brahmins from the
charge of complicity in unrighteous widow burning.
Latin travelers understood taboos to be central to Indian religion, for the
clergy and laity alike. For instance, they never kill cows and believe touching
cows can miraculously cure.126 Contact with corpses brings misfortune, espe-
cially for sailors.127 Some taboos are gender specific, so that only men cannot
drink wine and only women must shave their foreheads.128 All Indians, except
for heretics, perform complex ritual ablutions, both daily and for key festivals,
and keep hygiene laws on food and drink.129 Taboos make astrology central
to Indian life. Many days and hours are considered unlucky, so the Indians
refuse to do business then.130 Taboos, then, along with ritual killing, are cru-
cial to the Latin perspective on Indian religion.
122
Description, 177); these are presumably Jains, who are a significant presence in Maharashtra.
123
Polo claims that the Brahmins originated in West India, in what is now Maharashtra, and
spread all over from there: Polo, Description of the World 3.20 (Ronchi, Milione, 177.19–42;
Moule and Pelliot, Description, 177).
124
“Bragmones philosophantur per omnem vitam astrologiae intenti deditique honestiori
vitae”: Conti, De varietate fortunae 119–22, 526–35 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 92–93, 144–45).
Conti places the Brahmins on Sri Lanka, presumably referring to Tamil sections in the north of the
island. He claims they employ geomancy, weather magic, and the evil eye.
125
Conti, De varietate fortunae 388–90, 491–94, 519–25 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 128–29,
140–41, 144–45).
126
Nobles and commons alike use cow excrement as a ritual anointment on their body and
homes; Jordanus of Severac, Mirabilia descripta 63 (Gadrat, Une image de l’Orient, 252); Odoric
of Pordenone, Relatio 10.2–10.5 (SF, 440–41); Polo, Description of the World 3.17 (Ronchi, Mili-
one, 174.40–74; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 174); Mandeville, Travels 15.74.25–15.75.9.
Indians in Maabar/Malabar refuse to kill any animal at all, but hire Muslims to serve as their butch-
ers.
127
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 8.23–8.24 (SF, 437–38).
128
Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 10.5 (SF 441); Polo, Description of the World 3.17 (Ronchi,
Milione, 174.40–74; Moule and Pelliot, Description, 174); Mandeville, Travels 15.75.20–23.
129
Description, 174); Conti, De varietate fortunae 591–605 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 152–53).
130
Polo, Description of the World 3.17, 3.20 (Ronchi, Milione, 174.40–74, 177; Moule and
Pelliot, Description, 174, 177); Mandeville, Travels 15.74.1–7.

The religion of Seyllam/Sri Lanka is the only exception to the hostility that
Western travelers show toward Indian religion.131 Marignolli distinguishes
between the religions of India and of Seyllam (or between Hinduism and Bud-
dhism in modern terms). According to the friar, pious pagan monks dwell on
Seyllam, continuing to live in the style of the pre-Flood humans, for Adam
himself lived on this island.132 Like Indian mendicants, they dress in a Fran-
ciscan-style tunic and mantle and go barefoot with a staff when they beg for
rice from the laity (for they keep no food overnight). They even treat the Fran-
ciscan Marignolli as one of their order.133 While Marignolli admires the
Adamic monks, he also criticizes them for idolatry and for denying the
Bible.134 The friar tells a story of meeting on the Indian mainland an idola-
trous priest who lived an ascetic life of fasting, chastity, vigils, prayer, and
bodily cleanliness, even as he worshipped idols.135 God saw the priest’s wis-
dom and piety and thus caused his own idol to rebuke him and tell him how to
locate a Christian, in order to convert and be baptized. Marignolli draws the
conclusion that God does not allow those who follow the religion (lex) written
on their heart (e.g., the Indian priest, Cornelius in the Bible) to die unsaved
but miraculously enables them to come to Christianity.136
131
The sacred footprint on Sri Pada was considered to be Adam’s by Muslims (and from them,
by Christians). It served as a pilgrimage site for Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists alike (as the foot-
print of Shiva or of the Buddha); John of Marignolli, Relatio 500.8–500.10 (SF, 538–39); Odoric
of Pordenone, Relatio 17.2 (SF, 454); Polo, Description of the World 3.15 (Ronchi, Milione, 178;
Moule and Pelliot, Description, 178).
132
“Religiosi . . . sine fide sanctissime vite . . . nunquam tamen comedunt carnes . . . nudi
vadunt a lumbis et sursum et pro certo sunt boni moris, habent domus de foliis palmarum”: John of
Marignolli, Relatio 500.8–500.10, 502.1–502.3 (SF, 538–39, 540–41); Marignolli and Odoric
both visited southwestern Sri Lanka, around Colombo, where Muslim trading communities
existed. They thus visited areas of Sinhalese Buddhist populations, unlike the Tamil Hindus in the
north. Marignolli says the monks at the foot of Sri Pada are hygienic, eat once daily only fruit and
drinking only milk or water, sleep on the ground, and dwell half naked in huts made of palm
leaves. In their monasteries, they grow sacred trees decorated with gems, which they worship.
They even throw Marignolli a feast. Marignolli claims that the monks believe that Noah’s flood
(presumably Manu’s flood) did not reach their land, though he dismisses this assertion as false.
Ricoldo of Montecroce reports a similar belief about Noah’s flood not reaching India among the
baxites of the Il-Khan court: Liber peregrinationis 10 (Laurent, Peregrinatores medii aevi qua-
tuor, 117–18).
133
John of Marignolli, Relatio 502.1–502.3 (SF, 540–41).
134
Marignolli knew Roman literature on India and used it to interpret his travels. He cites the
“Bragman” from the Alexander Romance and compares them to the Seyllam monks. He even
speaks of naked “doglike philosophers” (borrowing from Augustine): Augustine, De civitate Dei
14.17, 15.20 (CCSL 47); John of Marignolli, Relatio 500.8, 502.3, 507.3 (SF, 538–39, 540–41,
544).
135
John of Marignolli, Relatio 509.1–509.3 (SF, 546–48); this priest is seemingly a Hindu,
rather than a Buddhist, presumably one of the Brahmins whom Marignolli had praised.
136
“Deus videns illius puritatem illuminavit eum primo per sapienciam, tandem demon coactus
per os ydoli dixi sibi: ‘non est in via salutis’ . . . hec hystoria utilis est ad ostendendum . . .
quicumque legem scriptam in corde ad Deo servat . . . domine acceptus est illi et docet eum viam
salutis”: John of Marignolli, Relatio 509.1–509.3, 509.6 (SF, 546–48, 548).

Polo similarly praises the founder of the order of ascetic idolaters on Seyl-
lam, whom he names Sergamuni Borcam.137 Polo tells a version of the biogra-
phy of the Buddha: his king father tried to give him nothing but pleasure, but
Borcam rejected this to live a celibate life at Adam’s Peak.138 After his death,
his royal father made an idol in his son’s honor and required all worship it,
thus leading the island into idolatry. The idolatrous worship of Borcam spread
from there to many other countries including Cathay, where Borcam is con-
sidered the most powerful of all the idols, so that the Yuan emperor himself
sought relics from Seyllam.139 Despite this later corruption, Polo praises Bor-
cam’s rule of life as righteous. Polo is confident that Borcam would have been
a saint, had he only been a Christian.
Whenever Polo speaks of the idolatry of Borcam, whether in Tibet,
Cathay, or Seyllam, he links it not with paganism in general but rather with a
particular form of religion involving a high god (Sergamuni), idols of that
god, an ascetic monastic observance, and a set clergy. Polo, then, comes close
to advancing the existence of a universal religion centered on the person of
Sergamuni with a widespread following across various Asian countries—the
modern idea of Buddhism.140
One medieval gloss of Polo’s work, appearing in multiple manuscripts,
highlights the similarity of the narrative of Sergamuni Borcam to that of St.
Josaphat and concludes that they were the same person. The glossator agrees
with Polo: Borcam was so righteous that he eventually did become a Chris-
tian and a saint. If Polo, Marignolli, and the glossator are willing to speculate
that God will eventually arrange matters so that righteous pagans hear of
Christianity and convert, at least one widely read medieval author went fur-
ther still. John Mandeville argues explicitly the Brahmins who live righ-
teously and worship the true God are saved like Job, without needing to know
of Christ.141 With the exception of Mandeville, however, medieval travelers
had no room for salvation outside the church.
137
Polo, Description of the World 3.15 (Ronchi, Milione, 178.1–30; Moule and Pelliot, Descrip-
tion, 178); “Sergamuni Borcam” is obviously a transliteration of “Sakyamuni Burkhan” (i.e., the Bud-
dha).
138
Polo’s biography also includes the Four Sights, as well as other standard details about the
Buddha’s life.
139
Polo, Description of the World 2.6, 2.34 (Ronchi, Milione, 80.6–11, 104.34–37; Moule and
Pelliot, Description, 80, 104).
140
On the slow development of European ideas of Buddhism, see Philip C. Almond, The Brit-
ish Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Urs App, The Birth
of Orientalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).
141
Mandeville (Travels 23.126.27–23.127.23, 24.134.20–24.135.17) emphasizes that through
general revelation, all peoples have some true religious beliefs. Still, Mandeville is far from plural-
ism. He implies that the vast majority of idolaters are damned, even if some special groups like the
Brahmins are saved.

Like the Patristic authors (who influenced some later medieval accounts of
India, e.g., Conti, Marignolli), later medieval authors seem to view Indian
religion as almost bipolar. On the one hand, certain pious groups, like the
Seyllam monks or the Brahmins, mirror Christian ascetics. Since they follow
an organized monastic observance, the Seyllam monks and the Brahmins both
have a religion. Indeed, they already have the divine lex written on their heart.
All they need now is a Christian preacher to convert them.
Latin travelers condemn, on the other hand, the vast majority of Indian
pagans. Despite their great diversity (e.g., in burial practices, in idol forms),
these pagans share a few things: ritual killings (suicide, murder, cannibalism),
taboos on food, purifications, and the rejection of inhumation. They do not,
however, have scriptures, or monasteries, or a liturgical calendar, or an inte-
grated church-state hierarchy. Popular Indian practices lack the qualities of a
true lex; they are only a diverse group of idolatries and temple shrines drawn
together by a few commonalities that the Latins viciously rejected. Occasion-
ally admiration for a few Indian pietists did not make the Latin response to the
Indians any less hostile over all.
vii. eastern lands and medieval religion

The medieval discourse on Eastern religions never became prominent. While
Latin Westerners interacted constantly with Jews, Muslims, and Eastern
European pagans, contact with the East was rare.142 When Westerners marvel
at the asceticism of Seyllam, the ritual killings of India, the ceremonial splen-
dor of Cathay, and the shamanistic magic of Central Asia, their wonder is due
as much to ethnographic topoi as to actual experiences. Travel accounts more-
over may not have had a long-term impact. Only a few medieval authors on
the East (e.g., Polo, Odoric, Carpini) were widely read, so, once trade to Asia
picked up again in the sixteenth century, early modern travelers formed new
impressions of Eastern religions without much concern for what medieval
authors had thought.143
When comparing the medieval travel accounts and their view on Eastern
religions, what they ignore or leave out surprises us as much as what they
know.144 As ethnographers, Western travelers were outright failures. Why do
none of the medieval descriptions of India, for example, name Vishnu, Shiva,
142
Only about two dozen Western authors have much interesting to say on the East, and those
authors share a great deal of information.
143
On the evidence for early modern readers of Polo, see Larner, Marco Polo and the Discov-
ery of the World, 151–83.
144
These travelers were not underinformed. Polo, Odoric, and Conti, for example, had each
spent decades in Asia and spoke Asian languages (e.g., Uighur, Persian). Polo claimed to know
four Asian languages, but never said which ones. Scholars agree, though, that one was Persian and
that Chinese was not one of the four (ibid., 41).

or any other major god, discuss yogic meditation or tantric rites, or note the
difference between Indian and Christian church architecture?145 How can so
many visitors to China fail to mention pagodas, filial piety, inner alchemy, or
martial arts?
Regardless of whether these medieval authors were complete or influen-
tial, they are fascinating for what they reveal about how medieval people
thought about religion. By 1350, medieval views on religion were quite com-
plex and nuanced; they did not just look eastward and group everything they
saw together as a vague “paganism.” The travel accounts of the Mongol
period did provide a series of broadly similar descriptions of Eastern religions,
which contain ideas about the nature of religion itself. While philosophy of
religion in the medieval period is most associated with the sophisticated views
of theologians like Roger Bacon or Pico della Mirandola, some of the high
medieval travel writers (especially Rubruck, Polo, Marignolli, and Montecor-
vino) demonstrate an implicit philosophy of religion.146
Travelers to Asia like Odoric and Polo noticed distinctive differences
between Tartar religion, the organized polytheisms of the Tuins and Cathay,
and more local polytheistic cults, especially in India. They show respect for
religion in China, Sri Lanka, and the like because they perceive these sects as
organized, monastic, hierarchies with scripture and liturgical cycles. They dis-
like, however, the nonmonastic local cults of India. Latin Christians neither
thought that all paganisms were alike nor felt any guilt contrasting them and
preferring one paganism to another. Montecorvino and Rubruck began to
claim that to qualify as a lex, a belief system needs scriptures, temples, monas-
tic observances, a professional clergy, and a fixed liturgical calendar.
Noticing the differences between these practices encouraged certain Latins
(particularly Polo and Marignolli) to come close to positing the existence of
two widespread religions (what we now think of as Buddhism and Hinduism)
with widespread followings shared across quite diverse areas. Thus, the same
god (Sergamuni Borcam) could be worshiped in Cathay and Tibet, the same
idolatry could spread from Kashmir all over, the same practices of ritual sui-
cide might appear in both Greater and Lesser India. Rubruck thought that cer-
tain worship patterns were common to all “idolaters,” but not to all pagans.147
145
Conti provides the name of one Indian god, Muthia, who was popular with sailors; Conti,
De varietate fortunae 536–51 (Bracciolini, De l’Inde, 146–47).
146
For the religious ideas of late medieval and renaissance theologians like Bradwardine, Cusa-
nus, and Pico, see Paul Richard Blum, Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2010); Michael Sudduth, “Pico della Mirandola’s Philosophy of Religion,” in Pico della
Mirandolla: New Essays, ed. M. V. Dougherty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),
61–80; Patrizia Palumbo, “Barbarous Brahmins, Conquest, and Italian Identity in Petrarch’s De
vita solitaria,” Forum Italicum 42, no. 1 (2008): 5–29.
147
The theologian Roger Bacon, following Rubruck, asserted that each nation in the world sub-
scribes to one of six religions (sectae): Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Tartar, pagan, and idolater,

Polo divided Chinese religion into two sects (the Bacsi and the Sensin) that
sound suspiciously like Buddhism and Daoism. Some Western travelers evi-
dently felt discontent with a vague concept like paganism and desired to clas-
sify Asian peoples into a discrete number of named religions.
Christianity was always the standard for Latin authors, by which other reli-
gions were judged. Idols were compared to the statues of the saints, high
priests to the Pope, processions to Rogationtide, pilgrimage shrines to St.
Peter’s, heretics to the Cathars. Yet even as Latin authors found foreign reli-
gions wanting, they also praised them for being crypto-Christian: honoring
Mary and Christ, reading the scriptures and hagiographies, keeping their
ascetic rules better than Christians. What Polo said about Borcam could prob-
ably serve as the view on Chinese religion for nearly all the travelers: Cathay
would be a land of saints, if only it were Christian.
In many ways, the Middle Ages held two largely independent streams of
thought on Eastern religions: the traditional ideas of the Roman ethnographic
literature and the new experiences of travelers post-1250. While there cer-
tainly was overlap (e.g., both mention widow burning in India) and some
authors knew both (e.g., Conti, Marignolli), their foci were different. Roman
authors had centered their discussion of Eastern religions almost exclusively
on asceticism. Medieval authors, in contrast, provide a richer description,
reflecting an interest in worship, burial, festival, and institutional hierarchy as
well.
Medieval authors thought of religion as something that is more than just
worshipping a god. Customary cults only qualified as a lex if they met certain
ritual and organization requirements. Latins never make the mistake, so com-
mon today, of treating religion as if it is the same as a “belief system.” Indeed,
travelers often knew little about what the Chinese or Indians, for example,
actually believed, and what they did know was often wrong (consider
Rubruck’s misunderstanding of the Tuins). Belief, however, was only one of
a long list of religious dimensions, from clerical hierarchy to liturgy, even to
material elements like clothing and architecture. Insofar as Eastern religions
were a false alternative to the truth of Christianity, they had to rival Christian-
though he admits that some nations syncretize between these sects. Bacon, thus, understood poly-
theism as three separate groups, plus mixed sects. Pagans live according to custom not religion
( pro ratione legum) and thus have no lex, priesthood, or fixed gods. Idolater (i.e., the Tuins), in
comparison, have ascetic priests, set prayer times and sacrifices, and worship images and the celes-
tial spheres, though their religion teaches them that the next life is one of material blessings. Bacon
elaborates different missions strategies for each of the five non-Christian religions and describes
what each gets right and wrong; see Roger Bacon, The ‘Opus Majus’ of Roger Bacon, ed. John
Henry Bridges (Frankfurt/Main: Minerva, 1964), 4.16.352–53, 4.16.370–74, 7.4.1.367–72;
Amanda Power, “Infideles in the Opus Maius of Roger Bacon,” Travel and Travellers from Bede
to Dampier, ed. Geraldine Barnes with Gabrielle Singleton (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars, 2005), 25–44.

ity’s material, institutional, and spiritual elements, not just its doctrine. If
Western missionaries were to successfully win converts from these religions,
then the clergy had to know the commonalities of these religions with Chris-
tian as much as their conflicts. The Latin West, then, described Eastern reli-
gions with a richness and detail (if not always an accuracy) that testifies to
their complex understanding of religious experience itself.
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Eastern Religions and the West: The Making of an Image

Author(s): Nathan J. Ristuccia

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Ó 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

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ii. the late antique inheritance

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India: gymnosophists, “brachmani” (Brahmins), “samanaei” (Shramana).21

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The Latin translation of the Alexander Romance (the Historia de preliis) is

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transmission of a name within the context of Manichaean polemic. For the

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mixed information on Indian religion from a variety of Roman sources to

iii. traveling east in the mongol century

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Late Middle Ages, the European reading public demonstrated a voracious

iv. a distant empire

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testify to the difficulty Latin missionaries had winning converts in China.54

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special clothing, almsgiving, set hours of prayer and of idolatrous sacrifice

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Latins frequently remark on structural similarities between Chinese reli-

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v. in the land of the cannibals

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Although he never traveled there, William of Rubruck provides a wealth

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vi. the many indias

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vii. eastern lands and medieval religion

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University of Notre Dame

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