Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - Джек Уезерфорд

fresco cycle, Saint Francis’s life is literally wrapped in silk—almost every scene depicts painted and figured textiles either defining the stories, or draped below in imaginary swaths.” In addition to simple silks, they portray the elaborate brocades that the Mongols liked and sent to the pope and kings as gifts. The artists placed Mongols in a variety of Christian paintings with their distinctive clothing, headgear, and bows. Horses began to appear in the art in the style of Chinese drawings made popular through Mongol commerce. The pictures also showed a strong Asian influence in the depiction of rocky crags and trees. European art, which had been flat and unidimensional throughout the Middle Ages, produced a new hybrid that was neither strictly European nor strictly Asian; it was a style of depth, light, textiles, and horses that became later known as Renaissance art.

By themselves, the images probably represented no more than a new awareness by the artists of the variety of human faces in the world, but in a 1306 illustration of the Robe of Christ in Padua, the robe not only was made in the style and fabric of the Mongols, but the golden trim was painted in Mongol letters from the square Phagspa script commissioned by Khubilai Khan. In the same church, the Vice of Infidelity appeared as a woman wearing the pith helmet style hat favored by Khubilai Khan. Old Testament prophets were depicted holding scrolls open to long, but undecipherable, texts in Mongol script. The direct allusions to the writing and clothing from the court of Khubilai Khan showed an undeniable connection between Italian Renaissance art and the Mongol Empire.

In the same way that Mongol faces and script began to appear in the art of Renaissance Europe, the Mongol ideas also began to show up in the literary and philosophical works of the era. The provocative nature of Mongol ideas and policies appeared decisively in the work of the German cleric Nicolaus of Cusa, whose 1440 essay “On Learned Ignorance” might be considered as the opening of the European Renaissance. He had spent time on church business in Constantinople shortly before its fall to the Ottomans, and, as his subsequent writings revealed, he was well acquainted with the ideas of the Persian, Arab, and Mongol civilizations. In 1453, he wrote a long essay “On the Peace of Faith,” in which he presented imaginary dialogues among representatives of seventeen nations and religions concerning the best way to promote global peace and understanding. The author shows some more than superficial awareness of Mongol religious ideology when he quotes the Tatar representative as describing his nation as “a numerous and simple people, who worship the one God above others, are astounded over the variety of rites which others have, who worship one and the same God with them. They deride the custom by which some Christians, all Arabs and Jews are circumcised, that others are marked on their brows with a brand, others are baptized.” He also notes the Mongol puzzlement at Christian ritual and theology, in particular that “among these various forms of sacrifice there is the Christian sacrifice, in which they offer bread and wine, and say it is the body and blood of Christ. That they eat and drink this sacrifice after the oblations seems most abominable. They devour what they worship.”

The fictional Tatar in the debate echoed precisely the words of Mongke Khan to the French envoy when he denounced the pernicious enmity among the religions of the world: “It is proper to keep the commandments of God. But the Jews say they have received these commandments from Moses, the Arabs say they have them from Muhammad, and the Christians from Jesus. And there are perhaps other nations who honor their prophets, through whose hands they assert they have received the divine precepts. Therefore, how shall we arrive at concord?” The Mongol answer had been that simple religious concord could only be produced by subsuming all religions under the power of the state.

The visit of Mongol envoys such as Rabban Bar Sawma furnished the Europeans with a far different view of the distant and exotic Mongols. No longer feeling a threat from the Mongols, Europeans began to see in Genghis Khan’s empire an intriguing alternative to the society in which they lived. Whereas writers used the Muslims to represent everything that the Europeans despised, they saturated the Mongol story with romantic images of a much better world, which in some ways was considered a utopia, the ideal society. The imagery of Mongol greatness received its clearest statement around 1390 by Geoffrey Chaucer, who had traveled widely in France and Italy on diplomatic business and had a far more international perspective than many of the people for whom he wrote. In The Canterbury Tales, the first book written in English, the story of the squire relates a romantic and fanciful tale about the life and adventures of Genghis Khan.

This noble king was called Genghis Khan,

Who in his time was of so great renown

That there was nowhere in no region

So excellent a lord in all things.

He lacked nothing that belonged to a king.

As of the sect of which he was born

He kept his law, to which that he was sworn.

And thereto he was hardy, wise, and rich,

And piteous and just, always liked;

Soothe of his word, benign, and honorable,

Of his courage as any center stable;

Young, fresh, and strong, in arms desirous

As any bachelor of all his house.

A fair person he was and fortunate,

And kept always so well royal estate

That there was nowhere such another man.

This noble king, this Tartar Genghis Khan.

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The Empire of Illusion

When Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain in 1492,

he was heading for Cathay, the land of the Great Khan.

D

AVID