Of smelly seas and ashen apples (chapter)

Of smelly seas and ashen apples: two German pilgrims’ view of the East
By Anne Simon, a chapter from Eastward Bound (ed. Rosamund Allen, 2004)

In this chapter, Simon follows two German travelers – Ludolf von Suchem (1350) and Hans Tucher (roughly 150 years later) through their pilgrimages to the east. As the chapter title indicates, both pilgrims write of the ashen apple that appears in Mandeville.

Says LvS, “. . . all the country round about is full of trees and great fruits, exceeding fair to see; but when these fruits are plucked and broken open, they are full of dust and ashes within, and for three days the hands of him who plucked them cannot be rid of a vile stench; for even all the country round about it is full of God’s curse” (196).

He’s writing of the land around the Dead See, of which HT writes similarly: “The stench by the Dead Sea is vile, yet many pretty trees are to be found there which bear fruit that is large, attractive and appealing, just like nice apples. However, when you pick them, on the inside these fruit are full of dust and emit an evil smell” (196).

Of course, the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah bordered the Dead Sea, and “Both authors explicitly connect the overwhelming stench of the Dead Sea and its inability to support life to the evil practiced in these cities” (196).

Simon offers the following interpretation of the moralized nature presented to us by LvS, HT and Mandeville, among others: “Apples recall Original Sin and the Fall of Man, or which the vice that led ultimately to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was but one manifestation. Given their deceptive appeal, they may also symbolise the vanity of all earthly appearances, especially in comparison with the eternal truths to which pilgrimage bear witness” (196).

What does Mandeville have to say on the matter? Quoting from the Penguin modern:

“By the side of this sea grow trees that bear apples of fine colour and delightful to look at; but when they are broken or cut, only ashes and dust and cinders are found inside, as a token of the vengeance that God took on those five cities and the countryside roundabout, burning them with the fires of Hell” (90).

Like other travelers, he includes this piece of information – whether as a means of moralizing, as a simple observation, or more likely because it had already become a standard feature in travel narratives mentioning the Dead Sea to which M. was compelled to conform. In any event, he is clear and vehement in his connection of the phenomenon to the fires of Hell. It is an interest token of moral nature that is of clear importance to European travelers. It does not concern Simon (her article is not actually about Sodom apples) but I am also interested in the real plant that medieval travelers likely understood to be an “apple of ash”, and on the prevailing use of the Sodom apple as a symbol in modern queer literature. If connecting Mandeville with Colm Toibin isn’t bizarre, I don’t know what is.

What Simon does is take us briefly through the travel narratives composed by each of these German travelers. This provides lots of interesting insight into the idea of travel writing and pilgrimage, the conception of audience, and the impetus for writing and communicating the experience of travel.

In no particular order:

-Simon mentions at a certain point, in relation to LvS, that he intentionally omitted details about things in exotic places that were commonplace there. That is, even if they are unknown to home audiences, the quality of being commonplace in their indigenous contexts struck down the worthiness of these objects in LvS’s narrative. So, in Famagusta, LvS states “I say nothing about spices, for they are as common there as bread is here” (200). I think that Mandeville is not so discerning, but it is interesting to reflect on the extent to which the personal qualities and prejudices of the author limit or mitigate the information received by the audience.

-Of the distinctly religious discourse in pilgrimage narratives from the Holy Land: “. . . missing from this and indeed many other pilgrimage reports is any explicit expression of personal piety or jubilation on finally seeing the places of Christ’s ministry so familiar from the Bible” (202). I think this is true of Mandeville and many other authors, any might be attributed to a desire to make it simple for the audience to experience the travel vicariously without feeling inhibited by the author’s own specific personal, emotional or spiritual investment. But I guess it depends on your purpose in writing. When I think back (with a small shudder) on Margery Kempe, I seem to remember nothing BUT passionate weeping at the firsthand experience of Biblical places. Then again, she was basically a self-styled saint who probably expected her readers to want to mimic and assume HER experience just as she mimicked and assumed that of Christ.

-Simon mentions LvS’s relative tolerance toward people of other religions (204). This is largely true of Mandeville but not, apparently, universally amongst medieval travel writers. (Is anything ever universally true?)

-LvS writes of the Bedouins in almost the exact same language as Mandeville. (Shit, is he a source used by Mandeville and I’m just forgetting? That would be embarrassing. Jessie: “Wow, these are super similar!” Committee: “Well, Jessie, that’s because ONE IS PLAGIARISING THE OTHER.”) Anyway, the point is made that they are swarthy, uncouth nomads who neither sow nor reap, and are therefore EVIL. (TruFacts: The proper term for this is “Disney Logic”. Or should be, anyway.) Says Simon, “Even if the characteristics singled out for description reflect the facts, swarthiness and ugliness are signs of the diabolic with which the genuinely strange and threatening are associated. Bedouins live outside regulated urban communities, dress differently, and enjoy a way of life that must have been completely incomprehensible to pilgrims” (205). I’d like to take this one step further and look at how their values regarding and interactions with the natural world are also read as an indication of their spiritual state.

-LvS apparently mentions barnacle geese in his narrative, at least according to Simon, and perhaps the vegetable lamb as well (though I’d think she’d have mentioned). But Simon has a fairly pithy summary of why the fantastical cannot be dismissed, even if we don’t find it plausible: “The for-us-unlikely is not questioned, possibly because in God’s Creation, everything is possible. The Bible itself bears witness to the existence of giants (Genesis 6:4); fantastic creatures were documented in classical and oriental travel literature and depicted on the margins of medieval mappaemundi. Besides this, the exotic was essential to the poetics of the Other, especially of the Orient” (206).

-On the practice of incorporating existing material into personal travel writing, Simon upholds Hans Tucher as evidence that it is not an unusual method – he had a particular “skill in integrating into the narrative material from other sources, including legendaries, chronicles, mythology, other pilgrimage reports, oral traditions and information passed on by monks, guides and local inhabitants” (209). Further, his sources are not acknowledged. So why does Mandeville get such a bad rap for doing the same, huh? Huh? Okay, there’s probably a good reason why that I’m just too tired to think of.

So, in sum: a useful commentary on some of the conventions of medieval travel writing with examples from outside of England/France that still show important commonalities with the texts I stare at balefully every day.

The Metrical Version of Mandeville's Travels

Today's task: The Metrical Version of Mandeville's Travels, (ed. M. C. Seymour, Early English Text Society).

Okay, so this was a pretty cute text. I feel weird saying that about a 2950-line poem in Middle English, but it's true. Something about it is just very...sing-songy and light. Much of the moralizing and the in-depth discussions of the other versions have been excised (of course) and the rhymes don't often seem too laboured, so the overall effect is very...cute.

There are a few key points in the text that I think would make interesting intersections with the longer prose versions:

(Botanical)
1. The episode with the Trees of Sun and Moon 68
2. Hagiography / the origin of roses 30
3. People who live on the scent of apples 67
4. The pepper narrative 51
5. The discussion of balm 41

(Fantastical/weird)
6. Monopeds 50
7. The country of Amazons 49
8. The mention of Uther Pendragon and Merlin 57
9. The seemly men / unseemly women 48

(Authority)
10. The purpose of the book 3
11. On shortening the book 4

I don't have any concrete thoughts about how these cross over between poetry and prose, but it's something I'll look at more closely later.


Here is an index of plant references from my edition of the book:

Abundance -- 41, 69
Apple -- (Sodom) 35; 67
Balm -- 41, 46?
Bamboo -- 56
Banana -- 41
Cedar -- 65
Cloves -- 54
Corn -- 75
Cotton -- 54
Cypress -- 64
Fig -- 41
Forest -- 64, 70
Garden -- 34, 41
Ginger -- 54
Grape / Wine -- 15, 58, 75
Lemon -- 51
Mace -- 54
Mastic -- 18
Nutmeg -- 54
Olive -- 38, 67
Pepper -- 51
Reed -- 16
Rice -- 75
Rose -- 30
Saffron -- 72
Spices -- 52, 54, 75
Sponge -- 16
Thorn -- 16
Tree -- (Bread) 55; (Cotton) 63; (Flour) 55; (Honey) 55; (Olive) 67; (Poison) 55; (Sun and Moon) 68; (Wine) 55; (Wool) 60
Wine / Grape -- 15, 58, 75
Wood -- 54

The Travels of Friar Odoric

Today’s task: The Travels of Friar Odoric (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002)

Let me start by saying that while I love buying books online, I need to start looking more closely at the editions I order. This one starts with a bit of bible-thumping as some publisher out of Grand Rapids reclaims Odoric for the modern missionary. Okay, it’s not so bad, but the framework this particular book provides for Odoric’s writing pirouettes on my very last nerve. It has a beautiful dust jacket, a pleasant typeface and a reassuring weight to the paper, though, so in the end, all is well.

Quick recap: who is Friar Odoric? A Franciscan monk from northeastern Italy who traveled throughout Asia in the early fourteenth century (I believe through present-day Iran, India, Indonesia, China, Nepal and Russia).

I have totally loved Odoric since we read his journal in 515. There’s no bullshit with Odoric. He’s descriptive and even poetic at times, but always in measured doses, and generally you sense you’re receiving his impressions unaltered by any thought of artistry or politics. If this makes sense, what impresses me about Odoric is how he confidently shuns any need or desire to impress. In short, he’s the sort of traveler I aspire to be: he lets the places and people he encounters largely speak for themselves, and speak how they will to whatever audience they find – but he doesn’t shame himself from indulging in description of the crazy shit he comes across, either. Good man.

Some points that cross with Mandeville:
-Odoric gives prices for trade items like dates and ginger, which Mandeville largely avoids in the versions I’ve read
-Odoric mentions the Dry Tree in passing (though Mandeville describes it at length), and passes over the Tartary Lamb in a passage that seems a bit truncated to me
-The discussion of bamboo, its uses and its properties is very similar to my versions of Mandeville
-The trees bearing honey, flour, poison and wine are in both Odoric and Mandeville, and change very little between the two


I am intrigued by the following passage that occurs early in Odoric’s journal:
“Of all I purpose not to speak, though I shall be the first to tell of many which will seem to a number of people past belief” (64).

I feel like this is close to a statement made by Mandeville in at least one version, but as I don’t have Mandeville with me here in Koeye (for shame!) I’ll have to check up on this later.


For the future, I have a question: what the hell are lignum aloes? I keep coming across references to them and have yet to find a satisfactory explanation. I'll push on this a little harder when I have a stabler internet connection.


For now, here is an index of botanical references in my edition of Odoric:
Agriculture -- 131
Apple -- 163
Bamboo -- 109
Barrenness -- 75
Cotton -- 131
Dates -- 75
Fertility -- 155
Flower -- 78
Forest -- 144
Fruit -- 67, 106
Ginger -- 98, 121
Green Mount -- 136
Lemon -- 115
Lignum aloe -- 105, 141
Pasture -- 93
Pepper -- 94, 96
Rhubarb -- 151
Rice -- 105, 106, 120, 128, 154
Shrubbery -- 129
Spices -- 107
Sugar -- 123
Thicket -- 136
Tree -- (Dry Tree) 68; (instrument of martyrdom) 88; (pleasant) 129; (tree of flour) 108; (tree of honey) 108; (tree of poison) 108; (tree of wine) 108; (tree worship) 77, 78
Vegetable lamb -- 148
Wheat -- 105
Wine -- 67, 77, 78, 100, 107, 120, 128, 134, 148

The Journey of William of Rubruck

Today's task: The Journey of William of Rubruck to the Eastern Parts of the World, 1253-55 (Kessinger Publishing, 2009)

I'm going to be honest with you here. I find William of Rubruck to be a rather distasteful man. I don't know what it is - something in his tone, no doubt. While it must take tremendous character and intrepidity to bring the Word of God all the way to Mangu Chan, the voice that carries across the centuries through this account is not a voice I find it easy to like or respect.

Anyway, that's just fine, because I don't need to respect him to find him useful. He did at least have this much sense:

"...it seemed to me, as I said before, that I had been transported into another world" (83).

Most plant references in Rubruck's text are pretty utilitarian. The majority reference millet, wine, food and drink, with little to no natural history or commentary on the botany/ecology of the lands he passes through. He gives some simple trade information - like Mandeville, the merchandise but not its worth, its consumers or its market.

Plants do figure on several occasions as points of comparison (X here is like Y at home), and while Rubruck does discuss the importance of agriculture, it is without moralizing. That is, people who do not practice agriculture are inferior, but they are not evil or immoral. This distinction, drawn by Mandeville, is one I find interesting and oddly logical (though by those standards, one might - and did - assume that my people were evil and immoral).

The most interesting botanical passage to my mind refers to rhubarb and its properties as a medicinal and supernatural curative. While the spiritual and medicinal are firmly parted ("Either go as an apostle doing real miracles . . . or do as a physician in accordance with medical art" [216]), the botanical is portrayed by Rubruck at different parts of the text as intrinsic to each one - a bridge, as it were.

At any rate, while I can make myself imagine limited borrowing by Mandeville in terms of Rubruck's plants, it is very minimal. Though he clearly relies on Rubruck for other aspects of his narrative, I fail to see the exchange of a bouquet of posies or anything else significantly plant-related between the two authors.


In any event, here is an index of botanical references for my edition of Rubruck:

Agriculture -- 134
Almond -- 67, 206
Apple -- 65
Art -- 54
Bean -- 95
Bough -- 211
Briar -- 133, 172
Cotton -- 44, 52, 70, 71, 201
Flour -- 68
Forest -- 51, 70, 92, 99, 158, 179
Fruit -- 48, 86, 103, 105, 143, 206, 212, 224, 242
Garden -- 134
Grains -- 221
Grapes -- 135, 262
Herbs -- 156
Medicine -- 156, 192, 216
Millet -- 62, 68, 98, 132, 169, 183, 186, 202, 221
Nomadism -- 53
Pasture -- 53, 92, 111, 117, 259
Pear -- 65
Plant technology -- 53, 55, 70, 71, 73, 195, 201, 208, 212, 147, 270, 272
Prune -- 206
Raisin -- 206
Rhubarb -- 192, 216
Rice -- 62, 166, 173, 186, 199
Rye -- 97, 98
Spices -- 44
Tree -- 128, 204, 208, 212, 247
Wheat -- 98
Whey -- 67
Wilderness -- 92, 118
Wine -- 48, 83, 86, 90, 102, 103, 105, 166, 173, 186, 194, 199, 206, 208, 242, 262, 266
Woods -- 133
Wormwood -- 172