Contacts between the Mongols and the Latin West from the Point of View of the Italian Chronicles in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century

Abstract

When the news of the Mongol invasions in eastern Europe and western Asia reached the European courts in the first half of the thirteenth century, the papal court was the first to send embassies to the Mongols. The reports of missionaries and papal envoys, alongside the famous account of Marco Polo, provided Europeans with the first accounts on these terrible warriors. Italian chroniclers of the period included the information provided by these accounts in their works, including in their local chronicles the achievements and habits of these mysterious warriors from the east. Other chroniclers were eyewitnesses to the first diplomatic contacts between European and Mongolian sovereigns. Their testimonies offer interesting elements to observe the first rudimentary diplomatic approaches between two worlds so far apart. Comparing various medieval chronicles, this paper investigates a fundamental psychological difference in the way how Italian and Central European authors of the time perceived the Mongols. If on the one hand Central European sources describe the Mongol warriors with terror and fear, the Italian ones are more optimistic, as they consider them as a possible resource to definitively drive out the Muslim infidels from the Holy Land.