The Enchanting Encounter with the East

Michael Baizerman

Description

“The Enchanting Encounter with the East” belongs to cross-cultural studies and focuses on the attempts of European literati to get acquainted with the bizarre realm of the Far East during the Late Middle Ages.
It turns out that western intellectuals lured by the marvels and myths of the Far East did a lot of spadework before taking a route that led to unfamiliar oriental realms. On this thorny path, many Eurocentric medieval fantasies had been debunked. The book shows how global connections had surfaced centuries before industrialization.
The book falls into the genre of non-fiction history and centers on the recognition of lands and cultures of India, China, and the Mongols by the Latin medieval society.
The storyline is based on the original online research and presents authentic arguments based on the author’s engagement with the sources. The readers might enjoy as well as profit from this comprehensive reference that does not require deep background knowledge. The content is provided in clear language and is supplemented with a bibliography and illustrations that will enrich the entire work.

Sujets

• The Iron Gate
• Reference
• Ten Lost Tribes
• Pax Mongolica
• Self-help
• Prester John
• History
• Khazars

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse UK
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665596718
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

THE Enchanting Encounter WITH THE EAST
Breaking the Ice between the Latin West and the Far East
 
 
 
 
 
 
MICHAEL BAIZERMAN
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™ UK
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Bloomington, IN 47403  USA
www.authorhouse.co.uk
Phone: UK TFN: 0800 0148641 (Toll Free inside the UK)
UK Local: (02) 0369 56322 ([phone] from outside the UK)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2022 Michael Baizerman. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse   07/15/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-6655-9670-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-9671-8 (e)
 
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
To Naomi and Gleb,
my beloved children,
for their confidence and support
that made it possible to fulfill my dream
Contents
UNIT I: The Miraculous Revival Or The Painful Recovery
1 .      What If the Earth Is the Sphere?
2 .      How to Measure the Earth’s Circumference?
3 .      How Long Spans the Inhabited World?
Bottom Line
UNIT II: The Saga of All My Sons
4 .      The Trefoil of the World
5 .      Where is the Heart of the World: The Location of Jerusalem on European Mind Maps
6 .      In Black and White: Racial Prejudices in the European Middle Ages
7 .      The Enigma of the Antipodes
Bottom Line
UNIT III: Unveiling the Alien
8 .      The Squall from the East
9 .      The Suspension Bridge across the Abyss
10 .    The Swan Song of the Mongol Thrust
Bottom Line
UNIT IV: Mapping Marvels and Monsters: In the Shadow of the Iron Gate
11 .    Meet your Enemy
12 .    Alexander at the Caspian Gates
13 .    Beware of Barbarians
14 .    A Kernel of Truth
15 .    Alexander versus Gog-Magog
16 .    The Lost and Found Tribes
17 .    The Ten Tribes and Other Monsters
18 .    The Turks in Jacob’s Tents
Bottom Line
UNIT V: Dreams Amid Debris: In the Shoes of Prester John
Prologue
19 .    The Early Encounters: Under the Historic Radar
20 .    The Shadow Crusader: Otto of Freising
21 .    The Black Prince: Yelu Dashi
22 .    The Mysterious Letter
23 .    Waiting for the Train That Would Never Come: The Fifth Crusade
24 .    The Scourge of God
25 .    The Underdog and the Power Strife on the Steppes
Bottom Line
UNIT VI: The Witness in the Den
26 .    Barefooted Envoys
27 .    John of Plano Carpini
28 .    William of Rubruck
29 .    John of Montecorvino
Bottom Line
A List of Illustrations
Image 1:   The “Blue Marble” snapshot by the Galileo spacecraft
Image 2:   The geocentric model of the universe, with its spheres and planets rotating around the immovable core.
Image 3:   The shooter rains his satirical arrows on the corrupted sinners
Image 4:   Jesus Christ blesses the earth
Image 5:   Intrepid travelers walk around the globe
Image 6:   The Nuremberg Globe of Martin Behaim, 1492
Image 7:   The Pear-Shaped Earth of Columbus
Image 8:   The Reconstructed World Map of Eratosthenes
Image 9:   The Reconstructed World Map of Posidonius
Image 10:   The World Map of Henricus Martellus
Image 11:   The T-O chart assigns the continents to Noah’s offspring
Image 12:   The world view of Ptolemy flanked with Noah’s sons
Image 13:   Noah’s sons observing their estates
Image 14:   Heinrich Bunting: The world modeled as a cloverleaf
Image 15:   Pietro Vesconte’s Mappa Mundi
Image 16:   Jerusalem on the sixth century Madaba map mosaic
Image 17:   Healing of Gadarene Demoniacs
Image 18:   Rouen cathedral, reproduction of the tympanum from the facade portal of St. John the Baptist
Image 19:   The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain
Image 20:   St. Morris in the Magdeburg Cathedral
Image 21:   Burgo de Osma Mappamundi
Image 22:   The Mongol invasion of Hungary
Image 23:   The scramble for the bridge
Image 24:   The sacking of a Russian city
Image 25:   The moonlit gorge depicted by Ivan Aivazovsky
Image 26:   While in transit…
Image 27:   A gate erected by Alexander the Great to seal off the hordes of Gog and Magog (A fifteenth-century illustration to Jean Wauquelin’s Book of Alexander)
Image 28:   Ebstorf Mappa Mundi: Gog-Magog Entering the Role
Image 29:   The henchmen of Antichrist besieging the city of saints
Image 30:   A Typical Notice
Image 31:   A false prophet (Nathan of Gaza leading the Ten Tribes to the Land of Israel (Germany, 1666)
Image 32:   Dieric Bouts the Elder. Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek
Image 33:   The tomb of Thomas the Apostle in San Thome Basilica.
Image 34:   Hunting with eagles: Khitans.
Image 35:   Manuel I Komnenos
Image 36:   The Fair Death of Prester John in a Mounting Battle Against Chinggis Khan
Image 37:   The Lord Pope Dispatches Delegations of the Dominicans and Franciscans to the Great Khan
Image 38:   The Great Khan Güyük at the feast. An illustration from Ata-Malik Juvayni’s “Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror”
Image 39:   Audience with the Great Khan Möngke. (An illustration from Ata-Malik Juvayni’s “Genghis Khan: The History of the World Conqueror”)
Image 40:   A Mongolian empress sporting a tall headdress
Image 41:   Mongol male and female costumes
Image 42:   A Mongolian tent
Image 43:   A one-masted dhow with an unfurled sail in the Indian Ocean
Image 44:   Black pepper vine with immature peppercorns
UNIT I The Miraculous Revival Or The Painful Recovery
“Who is ignorant of the places in the world, lacks knowledge not only of his destination but of the course to pursue.” (Roger Bacon) ( 1 )
1
What If the Earth Is the Sphere?
“Thus when the God, whatever God was he,
Had formed the whole and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He molded earth into a spacious round.”
-Ovid, Metamorphoses ( 2 )
“Of what importance is it to know whether the earth is a sphere, a cylinder, a disk, or a concave surface?” -Basil of Caesarea ( 3 )

The “Blue Marble” snapshot by the Galileo spacecraft
The tag “geography” fell into disuse among medieval European scholars. Ruled out of “liberal arts,” it never gained access to the university curriculum. Academics would treat this subject as a handmaid of cosmography at best or a concubine of theology at worst.
Geographic ideas adopted by medieval intellectuals originated in Ancient Greece. By adhering to these old-fashioned and partly erroneous tenets, western academics followed the path of “universal wisdom,” pouring the stagnated wine into new wineskins.
From a historical perspective, the advent of geography entailed a political stance to justify the Roman expansion. An inscription on Hereford Mappa Mundi, created in the late thirteenth century, gives the credit for the earliest description of the earth to the ill-fated Roman hegemon: “The world began to be measured by Julius Caesar.” However, his adopted son, Caesar Augustus, commissioned surveyors to evaluate our planet. ( 4 )
In compliance with their classical mentors, Latin disciples adopted the image of the spherical earth. They perceived our planet as a tiny eyeball anchored inside an enormous socket of the Heavens. This fixed globe embraced by water and shrouded by the veil of air acted as a pivot for the rotating universe whose seven planets were spinning around the immovable center. These celestial bodies followed their discreet circular orbits and revolved at their own pace across the clock.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model#/ media/File:Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg
The geocentric model of the universe, with its spheres and planets rotating around the immovable core.
In a renowned illustration of a Latin poem, Vox Clamantis (“The voice of the one crying out”), its author, John Gower, shoots arrows at the sinful world. The poet blasts humankind for its wickedness at the backdrop of the earth fashioned as a sphere with compartments for air, fire, and water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Gower _ world_Vox_Clamantis_detail.jpg#/media/ File:John_Gower_world_Vox_Clamantis.jpg
The shooter rains his satirical arrows on the corrupted sinners
This image of the spherical earth would not surprise an “extraterrestrial” onlooker, for whom the convexity of our planet was an undeniable fact. However, all human observers were “insiders” and based their assumptions on circumstantial evidence, such as…
Table 1: The evidence for the spherical earth
• The circle is a perfect geometric shape that any object is apt to take; this is true for the universe and its terrestrial center.
• The heaviest element of the universe, the earth, tends to accumulate at the center by the gravitational forces and takes shape as a circle.
• The unequal elevation of the Sun and the Polar Star at different latitudes: the higher point for the north-bound traveler and the lower location as one approaches the equator. ( 5 )
• During the lunar eclipse, the Earth casts a