The Mongols in the Making of Europe, 1220-1500

The Mongols in the Making of Europe, 1220-1500
Ann Fielding
ISBN 978-1-905246-76-2 - 256pp. Illus - Case
June 2009 - £60.00

This is the first study to examine the effect the Mogols had on Western imagination and the world beyond Christendom. It focuses on images and texts that have been hidden in plain sight for centuries.

In the early thirteenth century, the Mongols who were causing turmoil throughout the known world, were perceived as an Other that Westerners could neither dominate, nor pretend to understand, a people who existed outside maps and who introduced unpredictability into a scripted history that ran direct to the Apocalypse.
Amongst the illustrations featured are Tuscan paintings in which Mongols witness the Crucifixion and hold the horses for the Magi. New light is also brought to bear on some of the great literature of the period as to why Ghenghis Khan is romanticised, such as by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales. It also discusses why some Westerners linked themselves directly to the Mongols, such as Edward III of England who paraded across London dressed as the Great Khan.