Matthew Paris's Great Chronicle on the Tartars, 1238 to 1247
An English monk's chronicle recording rumours, letters and interviews about the Tartars as news of the Mongol invasion reached England.
Full title Chronica majora (Greater Chronicle), volumes III (1216-1239) and IV (1240-1247): the Mongol/Tartar notices and inserted letters of 1238-1247
Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk of St Albans, kept the Chronica majora from about 1240 until his death in 1259. For 1238 to 1247 he records how news of the Mongol invasions reached England: embassies begging for help, even the collapse of herring prices at Yarmouth because Baltic fishermen stayed home, and copies of letters from Frederick II, Hungarian and Dominican writers, a cleric called Ivo of Narbonne, and the testimony of a fugitive Russian archbishop named Peter. Matthew never met a Tartar; he compiled, commented and drew. This corpus has H. R. Luard's Rolls Series edition (1872 to 1883), Latin text with English margin notes, volumes 3 to 6.
How they knew
Compiled from others
Who “Tartar” means here
The Mongols of Batu's western campaigns (1237 to 1242) and the wider Mongol empire, spelled Tartari, Tattari or Tatari in the letters Matthew copied.
Why read it
It shows how Latin Europe first imagined the Tartars: the Tartarus pun that gave the name its extra 'r', the idea that they were the lost tribes shut up by Alexander, and the mix of real intelligence and horror stories that reached England.
Watch out
Everything here is second hand. Matthew mixes apocalyptic and biblical ideas with reportage, and some letters he copies (especially Ivo of Narbonne's) are of doubtful reliability. The Latin text is Luard's nineteenth-century edition.
A Russian archbishop's report: food, prayer and women archers
Editorial contextPeter, an archbishop who had fled Russia before the Tartars, was questioned in the West, and Matthew records his answers. The Tartars, he said, eat horse and dog meat and in need even human flesh, but cooked, not raw; they drink blood, water and milk. Each morning they raise their hands to heaven to worship the Creator, toss the first morsel into the air and pour the first drink on the ground, and claim John the Baptist as their leader. Their women fight, and are excellent archers.
They eat the flesh of horses and dogs and other abominable things, even human flesh in necessity, yet not raw but cooked. They drink blood, water and milk. … Every morning they raise their hands to heaven, worshipping the Creator. When eating, they throw the first morsel into the air; when drinking, they first pour part onto the ground, in veneration of the Creator. And they say they have Saint John the Baptist as their leader. … The women are warriors, and especially excellent archers.
Working translation
Original wording
Carnes comedunt jumentinas, caninas, et alias abominabiles, etiam in necessitate humanas, non tamen crudas, sed coctas. Sanguinem, aquam, et lac bibunt. … Quolibet mane manus ad caelum levant, Creatorem adorantes. Comedentes vero, primum morsellum in aera jaciunt; bibentes, prius partem in terram fundunt, in veneratione Creatoris. Et dicunt se habere sanctum Johannem Baptistam pro duce. … Mulieres bellatrices, praecipue sagittatrices optimae sunt.
Peter, a Russian archbishop, as recorded by Matthew Paris under 1244 (Luard, vol. 4)
Peter had fled the Tartars and his account mixes real observation (libations, sky worship) with rumour; the John the Baptist claim is unexplained. Luard notes the same account appears in the Burton Annals, given at the Council of Lyons.
Editorial contextUnder the year 1240 Matthew describes the Tartars bursting out of a homeland walled in by mountains 'like demons loosed from Tartarus', and adds that this is why they are rightly called Tartars, as if 'Tartareans'. This pun on Tartarus, the classical underworld, is why Latin writers turned the steppe name Tatar into 'Tartar'. The same paragraph compares them to locusts covering the earth.
in that same year a detestable people of Satan, namely a boundless army of Tartars, burst out from its region walled in by mountains; and, having broken through the solid mass of impassable rocks, they came swarming out like demons loosed from Tartarus (so that they are well called Tartars, as if 'Tartareans'), and like locusts covering the face of the earth
Working translation
Original wording
eodem anno plebs Sathanae detestanda, Tartarorum scilicet exercitus infinitus, a regione sua montibus circumvallata prorupit; et saxorum immeabilium soliditate penetrata, exeuntes ad instar daemonum solutorum a tartaro, ut bene Tartari, quasi tartarei, nuncupentur, scatebant, et quasi locustae terrae superficiem cooperientes
Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls Series, vol. 4, 1877)
The lost ten tribes, shut in the Caspian mountains by Alexander
Editorial contextMatthew reports the belief that the Tartars were descendants of the ten tribes of Israel who abandoned the Law for golden calves, and whom Alexander the Great tried to wall up in the Caspian mountains with stones cemented with bitumen; when the work proved too great, God made the mountain peaks close together. On the next page he admits a problem: these Tartars do not speak Hebrew or know the Law of Moses, which he explains as divine punishment.
These Tartars, whose memory is detestable, are believed to have come from the ten tribes who went away, abandoning the Law of Moses, after the golden calves; whom Alexander of Macedon first tried to shut up in the steep Caspian mountains with millstones set in bitumen. When he saw that the work was beyond human labour, he called on the help of the God of Israel; and the peaks of the mountains came together
Working translation
Original wording
Creduntur isti Tartari, quorum memoria est detestabilis, fuisse de decem tribubus, qui abierunt, relicta lege Mosaica, post vitulos aureos; quos etiam Alexander Macedo primo conatus est includere in praeruptis montibus Caspiorum molaribus bituminatis. Quod opus cum videret humanos labores excedere, invocavit auxilium Dei Israel; et coierunt cacumina montium adinvicem
Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard (vol. 4, 1877), drawing on Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica
A medieval legend (Alexander's gates and the enclosed nations, linked to Gog and Magog), taken from Peter Comestor; Matthew himself notes the difficulty that the Tartars are not Hebrew speakers.
Editorial contextIn a letter Matthew copied under 1243, a cleric named Ivo of Narbonne says that among eight Tartars captured in Austria was an Englishman, banished from England for some crimes, who had twice come to the king of Hungary as envoy and interpreter for the Tartar king, threatening disaster unless Hungary submitted. The letter goes on (next page) to give his account of how he drifted east, learned many languages, and was recruited by the Tartars because they needed interpreters.
Of those fleeing, the prince of Dalmatia captured eight, one of whom the duke of Austria recognised: an Englishman by nation, but banished from the kingdom of England for ever for certain crimes. He, on behalf of the most wicked king of the Tattars, had twice come to the king of Hungary as envoy and interpreter, and had openly threatened the evils that afterwards happened, unless he surrendered himself and his kingdom to Tattar servitude.
Working translation
Original wording
Ex ipsis vero fugientibus princeps Dalmatiae cepit octo, quorum dux Austriae novit unum, Anglicum natione, sed propter quaedam maleficia de regno Angliae perpetua banniatione proscriptum. Hic ex parte regis nequissimi Tattarorum, bis venerat ad regem Hungariae nuntius et interpres, mala, quae postmodum contigerunt, satis manifeste praemuniendo comminatus est, nisi se et regnum suum Tattareae dederet servituti.
Letter of Ivo of Narbonne to the archbishop of Bordeaux, copied by Matthew Paris under 1243 (Luard, vol. 4)
Ivo's letter is a contested text and its author admits a shady past; the Englishman's story cannot be checked. The same letter includes lurid cannibalism stories.
The fine print
How we know
compilation Assembled from earlier sources. The author did not observe it directly.
compilation and informant testimony: St Albans chronicler recording rumours and copying letters (Ivo of Narbonne 1243, Frederick II 1241, Peter the Russian archbishop's 1244 deposition, Hungarian and Dominican letters) received in England
Research notes
Matthew copies documents of uncertain provenance (Ivo of Narbonne letter is a contested text); his own commentary mixes apocalyptic tropes (Gog and Magog) with reportage. Luard's text is standard but pre-modern.
Why it matters
The principal English-based Latin chronicle recording how news of the Mongol invasion reached Western Europe, including the earliest use of the Tartarus etymology and the letters that defined 'Tartar' for Latin Europe; essential for the name's history.