53 pages • 1 hour read
John MandevilleThe Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1356A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 30-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 30 Summary: “Of the Royal Estate of Prester John; and of a Rich Man Who Built a Wonderful Castle and Called It Paradise”
Prester John is a powerful and wealthy emperor (though less powerful and wealthy than the khan). He rules many islands from the city Nise, near which are magnetic rocks that draw in any ships that have iron. He and the khan are always allied through marriage to avoid war.
Prester John and many in his lands are Christians, but they follow slightly different doctrines than Catholics. He controls 72 provinces, each ruled by its own king (many of whom rule sub-kings). When Prester John goes into battle he carries three crosses, all encrusted with jewels and guarded by 110,000 men. When he rides in peace, he has a simple wooden cross near him to remind him of Jesus’s sufferings. Prester John sleeps in a sapphire bed that exerts a magical force that stops him from having lustful thoughts.
Of the many marvels in this land, Mandeville focuses on a sea of gravel and sand that nevertheless has tides, waves, and fish. Mandeville ate one of these fish; while it was oddly shaped, it was edible. A river of precious stones flows into this sea.
Near Prester John’s lands is an island called Malazgirt, which a man named Catolonabes once ruled. This man built a castle with beautiful gardens inside it that he called Paradise. In this castle he raised young men as assassins, sending them to kill other lords until many banded together to destroy him.
Chapter 31 Summary: “Of the Head of the Devil in the Vale Perilous; and of the Customs of the Peoples in Different Isles Round There”
Past the nearby River Ganges is a vale variously called the Vale of Enchantment, the Vale of Devils, and the Vale Perilous. It is filled with demons but also much gold and silver. Many Christians and non-Christians visit this area in the hopes of becoming rich, but all who do so are killed. Mandeville says that he and his companions were split on whether to go through the vale when they arrived at it. Eventually 14 of them decided to pass through it. When they emerged out the other side, only nine were left. They all saw many marvelous things within the vale, but those who lived resisted the temptation to touch the wealth they saw.
Beyond that valley are many strange islands filled with giants, people who practice polyamory or incest, wives who kill their husbands, and people that celebrate death because they view life as suffering.
Mandeville then gives more information on life in India. He lists the wildlife, including giraffes (described as a spotted animal with the body of a horse, the tail of a hare, and a 20-cubit long neck), chameleons (comparable in size to small goats), and more strange creatures. In India, people also grow cotton on bushes and have hazelnuts as big as heads (coconuts).
Chapter 32 Summary: “Of the Goodness of the People on the Isle of Bragman; of King Alexander; and Why Prester John Is so Called”
Near India is another island full of people who are not Christian but live by the Ten Commandments. These people are generally trustworthy and kind. When Alexander the Great was there, he sent them a letter telling them to submit or be conquered. They responded by saying that they had nothing he would want, so all he could take from them was their peace. Alexander felt that it would be shameful to fight them and left. Alexander also left the neighboring people in peace because their beliefs about the transience of worldly wealth moved him. Mandeville says that though these people are not Christian, God must love them because of their virtue. He tells the reader that since people do not know exactly whom God loves, they should treat all well and pray for all.
In a land past this are tiny people who live off the smell of apples and have no capacity for reason. Near them are feathered people, and beyond them is a wilderness that Mandeville did not dare to go to because of the number of wild beasts that live there. However, he was told that in this wilderness were the Trees of the Sun and the Moon, which once spoke to Alexander the Great and told him about his death.
Returning to the topic of Prester John, Mandeville explains how he got this name. Once, a Christian prince visited a church in Egypt. This ruler saw the priests of this church and decided that he did not want his royal title to be “emperor” or “king” but “priest.” The first priest they saw was called John, and since then the ruler has passed the title of Prester John down to his descendants.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Of the Mountains of Gold, Which the Ants Watch Over; and of the Four Rivers That Come From the Earthly Paradise”
East of Prester John’s land, and subject to him, is Ceylon (Taprobane). Many Christians live here, and there are two summers and two winters each year. On Ceylon, there are hills with much gold in them. Huge ants mine this gold and attack anyone who tries to take it, but the locals have devised tricks to steal the gold.
Going east from here, one reaches considerable uninhabited land and then the Earthly Paradise. Mandeville says that he cannot speak of the Earthly Paradise because he has not seen it, but he has heard that it is the highest place on Earth (so high it reaches the moon) and that it is encircled by a wall covered in moss. It is also guarded by the flaming sword of God. No living person can reach Paradise because of the animals that surround it and because of the strength of the current of the four rivers that flow from it: the Ganges, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.
Mandeville says he will return to talking about the Earth and Prester John.
Chapter 34 Summary: “Of the Customs of the Kings and Others Living in the Isles Adjacent to Prester John’s Land and of the Honour Which the Son Does to His Dead Father”
Mandeville talks again about the possibility of circumnavigating the Earth but says that most who go to Europe from Asia return via the islands near Prester John. On the route back, one can visit Tibet, another place that is subject to the khan. Here people worship an idol that commands them to eat the heads of their dead relatives and leave the body for birds. Another nearby island has a ruler with exceptionally long nails; there, the feet of women are bound from birth to keep them small.
Past this is the land of the khan, which Mandeville demurs from describing again. He does say, however, that many hold to elements of Christian belief in this part of the world, though they are not educated enough about the precepts of Christianity to be true believers. They worship idols with the same reverence that Christians worship the saints, but they only receive the advice of the devil through them.
Mandeville says that there are many other places in the world he has not adequately described, so he encourages his readers to explore for themselves. He left England in 1322 and performed many brave deeds of arms with honorable men, but he is now coming to a rest 34 years after he left. While he knows people will not believe everything he says, he conferred with the pope while writing the book, and the pope agreed with all his claims.
Mandeville concludes by asking for the prayers of those who read the book and says he hopes that all of them go to heaven.
Chapters 30-34 Analysis
The final chapters of the book mainly focus on the lands surrounding Prester John’s kingdom. Mandeville’s description of the Earthly Paradise continues to show The Interplay of Religion, Folklore, and Reality in the Medieval Mind. The description of the Earthly Paradise—in particular, the flaming sword—clearly identifies it as the biblical Garden of Eden, which Mandeville presents as a physical location that can be seen (if not reentered). Moreover, the place serves as a basis for supernatural phenomena and as a defining landmark in world geography. Throughout the narrative, the Earthly Paradise has been referenced as the origin point for several marvels (including medicinal wood in Chapter 8 and the Well of Youth in Chapter 18). Mandeville also claims that the Ganges, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates (and all freshwater rivers) flow from a spring inside it. The Genesis story is thus quite literally at the center of Mandeville’s worldview.
The story of the gold-digging ants of Ceylon adds further context to the medieval interpretation of the world. This story originates in the writing of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who claimed that while traveling in India he saw fox-sized ants used to dig gold. Mandeville evidently combined old myths with a literal interpretation of biblical scripture to “create” the easternmost regions of Asia, though once again there are elements of truth—e.g., the reference to foot-binding, which was practiced in China for centuries.
Mandeville’s description of the Vale Perilous shows how he combines myth and religion with geography for moral instruction. This devil-infested area is presented as a real location that exposes the greed of both Christians and non-Christians. Many, including some in Mandeville’s own party, are unable to pass the moral test of the vale. A consequence of the conflation of religious belief with observable reality is Mandeville’s emphasis on the worldly rewards of following Christian moral precepts. This intersects with the theme of The Lessons Christians Can Learn From Other Cultures, as Mandeville often highlights that he thinks God is punishing Western Christians for failing in their moral requirements.
The character of Prester John serves as a model for such Christians to follow. He is a religiously devout leader who carefully preserves his marital chastity and does much to honor Jesus. Moreover, the Prester John whom Mandeville meets is part of a line of Prester Johns who honor priests through their very names. During Mandeville’s conversation with the sultan, the sultan claims, “For [priests] ought to give less learned men an example of how to live well” (107). Though the sultan went on to say that modern priests do not do so, he argues that the social role of priests is to exemplify Christian virtue. That Prester John and his descendants take this idea to heart shows their religious devotion and makes them role models as well.
This theme also appears in Mandeville’s discussion of the peoples of Bragman and Oxidrace, the islands of moral non-Christians. Mandeville uses these people to show that professing faith Christian faith is not sufficient. Moral action is a necessity. While these cultures do not know about or accept Christian teachings, they serve God through exhibiting virtues such as truthfulness, charity, and temperance. Mandeville is keen to emphasize that God loves them for this and that he himself includes them in his prayers. Mandeville describes them in the hopes that Christians learn from their example, practice the same virtues, and so receive the same love from God. Bragman and Oxidrace are clear mirror-societies, meant to show Europeans alternatives to their customs, though here more evidently to point out Europe’s flaws. The theme of Medieval Depictions of the Exotic and the Other is thus again important, and more tropes previously deployed reappear, including idol worship, cannibalism, and kings of kings.
