John of Plano Carpini's Return from the Mongols

Abstract

In 1943, at the Bibliothèque Nationale, whilst browsing in the Historiae Hungaricae Fontes Domestici edited by M. Florianus, I came across a short notice, No. 2 of Adnotationes Historicae seculi XII et XIII, entitled: “Quos Bela rex Hungarorum, velut dominus papa, nuntios ad Thartaros direxit.” An explanatory note states: “Notitia … de electione novi imperatoris Tartarorum, et nuptiis Stephani Belae IV-i filii cum filia regis Cumanorum celebratis descripta ex codice Parisiensi Luxemb. Fol. 22. sec. XIH-i, edita fuit in opere collectitio cui nomen “Thesaurus historicus” Budapestini anno 1878.” It took me some time to establish that the “Thesaurus historicus” mentioned here was in fact the Hungarian periodical Történelmi Tár. Fortunately I had no difficulty in finding the volume referred to by Florianus, and in it I saw reproduced the same Latin text accompanied by a note to the effect that the MS referred to contained also a version of Piano Oarpini's Historia Mongalorum. There was also a reference to the “Zeitschrift für deutsche Literature, XVII”. I had been chasing this reference intermittently for years when, in 1951, Mile. Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, conservateur adjoint at the Bibliothèque Nationale, told me that Marczali's reference was wrong, and was to be corrected to “Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum”! There I found an article by W. Studemund, in which the note mentioned by Florianus and Marczali had been published, probably for the first time.