Spices and late-medieval European ideas of scarcity and value

Speculum

Volumn 80, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 1209-1227

  Freedman, Paul ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 54849420429     PISSN: 00387134     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0038713400001391     Document Type: Article

References (168)

1. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, livre XVII, ed. and trans. Jacques André (Paris, 1981), 17.8.8, p. 147: "Piperis arbor nascitur in India, in latere montis Caucasi quod soli obuersum est, folia iuniperi similitudine. Cuius siluas serpentes custodiunt, sed incolae regionis illius, cum maturae fuerint, incedunt et serpentes igni fugantur, et inde ex flamma nigrum piper efficitur."
2. Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin, 1958), 52, p. 192
3. Pliny, Natural History 12.14
4. Edmond Faral, "Une source latine de l'histoire d'Alexandre: La lettre sur les merveilles de l'Inde," Romania 43 (1914), 119-215 and 353-70, at p. 205 (version A): "Ibi nascitur multitudo piperis, quod idem serpentes custodiunt; homines vero per industriam suam sic colligunt: cum maturum fuerit, incendunt eadem loca, et serpentes sentientes ignem fugiunt et sub terra se mittunt merito propter flammam: piper ipsum nigrum efficiet et sic eligitur, verumtamen natura piperis alba est." On the relation between this text and Isidore of Seville, see pp. 354 and 358-59
5. On the complex history of the letter, see Ann Knock, "Wonders of the East: A Synoptic Edition of the Letter of Pharasmanes and the Old English and Old Picard Translations" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1982)
6. Herodotus, Histories 3.107 and 110-11
7. That cinnamon is made into birds' nests would be absorbed into the legend of the immortal phoenix: for example, Pliny, Natural History 10.2
8. De ave phoenice (attributed to Lactantius), lines 83-84, in Minor Latin Poets, ed. and trans. J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff, rev. ed., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), p. 656
9. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.23, ed. Karl Schenkl, CSEL 32/1 (Vienna, 1897), p. 198
10. and Isidore, Etymologiae, livre XII, ed. and trans. Jacques André (Paris, 1986), 12.7.23, pp. 241 and 243
11. See M. Laurent, "Le phénix, les serpents et les aromates dans une miniature du XIIe siècle," L'antiquité classique 4 (1935), 375-401
12. Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.28.1
13. Pliny, Natural History 12.85
14. Theophrastus, Enquiry into Plants 9.5.1
15. Examples in Laurent, "Le phénix," p. 381
16. James A. Boon, Affinities and Extremes: Crisscrossing the Bittersweet Ethnology of East Indies History, Hindu-Balinese Culture, and Indo-European Allure (Chicago, 1990)
17. A specific example is the upas tree of the East Indies, supposed by European observers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century to contain a deadly poison that killed everything within miles. The connection between this legend and the Dutch control of the spice trade is discussed in Michael R. Dove and Carol Carpenter, "The 'Poison Tree' and the Changing Vision of the Indo-Malay Realm: 17th Century-20th Century," forthcoming in Environmental Change in Native and Colonial Histories of Borneo, ed. Reid Wadley (Leiden, 2005)
18. Some examples of the snakes surrounding the pepper plants: the Old English "Wonders of the East" (see Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the "Beowulf" Manuscript [Woodbridge, Eng., 1995], p. 188)
19. the Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus 3.6 (eighth century? see Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 308)
20. the purported letter of Alexander to Aristotle (probably ninth century; Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem ad codicum fidem edita et commentario critico itistructa, ed. W. W. Boer [The Hague, 1953], p. 53)
21. histories of Alexander such as the Historia de proeliis and Jean Waquelin's Histoire d'Alexandre (cited by Faral, "Une source latine," pp. 199-200)
22. Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi (ed. Valerie I. J. Flint in Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 57 [1982], 53)
23. vernacular works derived from the Imago mundi such as the thirteenth-century L'image du monde de maître Gossouin (ed. O. H. Prior [Lausanne, 1913], pt. 2, 2c[a], p. 111
24. a late-fifteenth-century English version is Caxton's Mirrour of the World, ed. Oliver H. Prior [London, 1913], p. 71)
25. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor (ed. and trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns [Oxford, 2002], 2.3, p. 187 [pepper in India], and 3.73, p. 697 [pepper in Arabia])
26. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis 86 (in Iacobide Vitriaco. . . libri duo quorum prior Orientalis, sine Hierosolymitanae, alter Occidentalis historiae nomine inscribitur [Douai, 1597; repr. Farnborough, Eng., 1971], p. 136)
27. Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum 8.39 and 11.28 (ed. H. Boese [Berlin, 1973], pp. 289 and 339)
28. and Johannes Witte de Hese, Itinerarius (ed. Scott D. Westrem, Broader Horizons: A Study of Johannes Witte de Hese's "Itinerarius" and Medieval Travel Narratives, Medieval Academy Books 105 [Cambridge, Mass., 2001], p. 138)
29. Marco Polo, Milione, Le devisament dou monde: Il Milione nelle redazioni toscana e franco-italiana, ed. Gabriella Ronchi, Biblioteca 45 (Milan, 1982), 175, pp. 562-63
30. This wonder is at least potentially present in Herodotus's description of gathering cinnamon, but it seems to originate with the first Christian lapidary, written near the end of the fourth century by Epiphanius of Constantia (modern Famagusta in Cyprus) according to whom the gem "hyacinth" (iacinthus, probably zircon) is extracted from Scythian gorges by throwing pieces of lamb that eagles retrieve: Epiphanius Constantiensis, "De gemmis," Latin version preserved in the Collectio Avellana, a sixth-century compendium of mostly papal and imperial laws, ed. Otto Günther, CSEL 35/2 (Vienna, 1898), pp. 753-54
31. See also Epiphanius de gemmis: The Old Georgian Version and the Fragments of the Armenian Version, ed. Robert P. Blake and Henri de Vis, Studies and Documents 11 (London, 1934), English trans, pp. 117-18
32. There are no snakes in Epiphanius, the gorges being simply inaccesible. The first snakes appear in one of the legends of Alexander that went under Aristotle's name. Versions of this story (with and without snakes) made their way to China and the Byzantine Empire and are featured in Arabic accounts of the wonders of India including the story of Sinbad in the Arabian Nights tales; see Christel Meier, Gemma spiritalis: Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jahrhundert, 1, Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 34 (Munich, 1977), pp. 99-138 and 353-58
33. and Berthold Laufer, The Diamond: A Study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk-Lore, Field Museum of Natural History Publication 184, Anthropological Series 15/1 (Chicago, 1915), pp. 6-28
34. Marco Polo's account is cited in the Catalan Atlas of 1376, which says Alexander knew about this marvel (L'Atlas Català de Cresques Abraham [Barcelona, 1975], p. 135)
35. and appears also in Niccolò de' Conti's fifteenth-century account of "Bizangalia" (Vijayanagar), as found in Poggio Bracciolini, De l'Inde. Les voyages en Asie de Niccolà de' Conti: "De varietate fortunae," livre IV, ed. and trans. Michèle Guéret- Laferté (Turnhout, 2004), lines 622-27, pp. 155-56
36. On dangerous animals in connection with precious natural substances, see Jean-Pierre Albert, Odeurs de sainteté: La mythologie chrétienne des aromates, Recherches d'Histoire et de Sciences Sociales 42 (Paris, 1990), pp. 185-91
37. and Laurent, "Le phénix, les serpents et les aromates."
38. On snakes in materia medica see Peter Murray Jones, Mediana antiqua: Codex Vindobonensis 93, Manuscripts in Miniature 4 (London, 1999)
39. Snakes guard pepper plants in the tenth-century illustrated Latin translation of Dioscorides' pharmacological handbook, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 337, fol. 64r. They accompany vervain in a late-eleventh-century herbal produced at Canterbury, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1431, fol. 15r, and dragonwort (Arum dracunculus), known as serpentaria, in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 6823, fol. 143r, the latter illustrated in Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The Illustrative Traditions (Toronto, 2000), p. 259
40. On the interrelations among demand, rarity, and the cultural value ascribed to commodities, see Arjun Appadurai's introduction to his edited volume, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, Eng., 1986), pp. 3-63
41. On luxury and fashion in the early-modern world, see Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (London, 1996)
42. On mastic in its historical setting, see Andrew Dalby, "Mastic for Beginners," Petits propos culinaires 65 (2000), 38-45
43. A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus's First Voyage, ed. Francesca Lardicci et al., Repertorium Columbianum 6 (Turnhout, 1999), pp. 67, 86, and 224
44. Other examples of Columbus's over-optimistic identification of spices are given in Valerie I. J. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton, N.J., 1992), pp. 133-35
45. Stefan Halikowski Smith, "The Mystification of Spices in the Western Tradition," European Review of History/Revue européenne d'histoire 8 (2001), 119-35
46. Jack Turner, Spice: The History of a Temptation (New York, 2004)
47. Robert Henri Bautier, The Economic Development of Medieval Europe, trans. Heather Karolyi (London, 1971), p. 142, says that "traditional" historians exaggerate the economic role of spices
48. According to Peter Spufford, Power and Profit: The Merchant in Medieval Europe (New York, 2003), pp. 309-16, Europe played a small role in the international spice trade, but he notes the importance of spices for European merchants and the high unit value of these products
49. Michel Balard, "Du navire à l'échoppe: La vente des épices à Gênes au XIVe siècle," Asian and African Studies 22 (1988), 203-26, esp. pp. 203-4, regards spices as the most valuable Mediterranean cargo notwithstanding the significance of bulkier commodities such as textiles, wool, salt, and cereals
50. Joaquim Romero Magalhães, Portugueses no mundo do século XVI: Espaças e produtos (Lisbon, 1998), pp. 24-25
51. Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial, 2nd ed. (Lisbon, 1985), 2:159, quoting the anonymous chronicle attributed to Álvaro Velho
52. See also Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge, Eng., 1997), p. 129. The conversation between the crewman and the merchant of Tunis is also reported in the Lusíadas of Camōes, canto 7, but although the poem is full of information about spices, here it is only Christianity that motivates the voyagers
53. Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, Eng., 1984), p. 142
54. Peter Musgrave discusses the risks of the spice trade, but his article deals with the postmedieval period: "The Economics of Uncertainty: The Structural Revolution in the Spice Trade, 1480-1640," in Shipping, Trade and Commerce: Essays in Memory of Ralph Davis, ed. P. L. Cottrell and D. H. Aldcroft (Leicester, 1981), pp. 9-21
55. Frederic Lane, "Pepper Prices before da Gama," Journal of Economic History 28 (1968), 590-97
56. Eliyahu Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, N.J., 1983), pp. 167-69, 313-15, 421-23, and 463
57. These articles deal with the wholesale price of pepper in Mediterranean ports. At the retail level there is some indication that pepper and other spices became more expensive over the course of the fifteenth century; see, for example, Raymond van Uytven, "Herbes et épices dans les villes des Pays-Bas du sud," in Saveurs de paradis: Les routes des épices (Brussels, 1992), pp. 77-78
58. On the comparative prices among different spices, see Federigo Melis, Documenti per la storia economica dei secoli XIII-XVI, Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica F. Datini, Pubblicazioni, 1/1 (Florence, 1972), pp. 298-320
59. Eliyahu Ashtor, Histoire des prix et des salaires dans l'Orient médiéval, Monnaie, Prix, Conjoncture 8 (Paris, 1969), pp. 138-41, 323-39, and 409-27
60. Magalhães Godinho, Os descobrimentos, 2:183-220
61. Damien Coulon, Barcelone et le grand commerce d'Orient au moyen âge: Un siècle des rélations avec l'Egypte et la Syrie-Palestine (1330-1430 environ)" (doctoral dissertation, University of Paris I, 1999), 2:512-46
62. and Spufford, Power and Profit, pp. 313-15
63. Balard, "Du navire à l'échoppe," tables 1 and 2 (pp. 207 and 208)
64. Eliyahu Ashtor, "The Volume of Mediaeval Spice Trade," Journal of European Economic History 9 (1980), 753-63, esp. p. 757
65. reprinted in Ashtor, East-West Trade in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Benjamin Z. Kedar, Collected Studies Series 245 (London, 1986)
66. On this question see also C. H. H. Wake, "The Changing Pattern of Europe's Pepper and Spice Imports, ca. 1400-1700," Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979), 361-403
67. and Wake, "The Volume of European Spice Imports at the Beginning and End of the Fifteenth Century," ibid. 15 (1986), 621-35
68. K. S. Mathew, Portuguese Trade with India in the Sixteenth Century (New Delhi, 1983), p. 22
69. E. Ashtor, "Profits from Trade with the Levant in the Fifteenth Century," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 38 (1975), 257
70. reprinted in Ashtor, Studies on the Levantine Trade in the Middle Ages, Collected Studies Series 74 (London, 1978)
71. Coulon, "Barcelone et le grand commerce," p. 540
72. Josep Plana i Borràs, "The Accounts of Joan Benet's Trading Venture from Barcelona to Famagusta, 1343," Epeteris 19 (1992), 105-18
73. The Viandier of Taillevent: An Edition of All Extant Manuscripts, ed. Terence Scully (Ottawa, 1988)
74. The medical commentary was wrongly attributed to Arnau de Villanova in early printed editions of his works (e.g., Opera nuperrime revisa una cum ipsius vita . . . [Lyons, 1520], fol. 137ra) and was probably by a fifteenth-century German writer. (I am grateful to Michael McVaugh of the University of North Carolina for his advice on this passage.)
75. On Eustache Deschamps, see Œuvres complètes, ed. Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire and Gaston Raynaud, 7 (Paris, 1891), pp. 88-90. (Anne Dropick, my colleague at Yale University, kindly pointed out the two poems to me.)
76. Phyllis Pray Bober, Art, Culture and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy (Chicago, 1999), pp. 145-92
77. Johanna Maria van Winter, "Kochen und Essen im Mittelalter," in Mensch und Umwelt im Mittelalter, ed. Bernd Herrmann (Stuttgart, 1986), pp. 88-92
78. Bruno Laurioux, Le moyen âge à table (Paris, 1989), p. 39
79. Pliny, Natural History 12.14, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 20: "Usum eius adeo placuisse mirum est: in aliis quippe. suavitas cepit, in aliis species invitavit, huic nec pomi nee bacae commendatio est aliqua. sola placere amaritudine, et hanc in Indos peti! quis ille primus experiri cibis voluit aut cui in appetendi aviditate esurire non fuit satis? utrumque silvestre gentibus suis est et tamen pondere emitur ut aurum vel argentum."
80. In Natural History 6.101 Pliny estimates that exotic products in general sold in Rome for a hundred times their price in India
81. The Periplus Maris Erythraei, ed. and trans. Lionel Casson (Princeton, N.J., 1989), pp. 11-43, 94-97, and 283-91
82. Steven E. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy in the Erythro Thalassa, 30 B.C.-A.D. 217, Mnemosyne Supplementum 91 (Leiden, 1986)
83. Steven E. Sidebotham and Willemina Z. Wendrich, "Berenike: A Ptolomaic-Roman Port on the Ancient Maritime Spice and Incense Route," Minerva 13/3 (May-June 2002), 28-31
84. Sidebotham and Wendrich, "Berenike: Archaeological Fieldwork at a Ptolomaic-Roman Port on the Red Sea Coast of Egypt, 1994-1998," Sahara 10 (1998), 85-96
85. Gary K. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC-AD 305 (London, 2001), pp. 27-89
86. On the trade in drugs and spices, see Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, A.D. 300-900 (Cambridge, Eng., 2001), pp. 708-10
87. The cookbook of Anthimus, a Greek writing in the early sixth century for a Frankish king, includes pepper as well as ginger and cloves in a few recipes: De observatione ciborum: On the Observance of Foods, ed. and trans. Mark Grant (Tomes, 1996), pp. 50, 52, 54, and 60
88. In general, see W. Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au moyen âge, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1885-86)
89. Robert S. Lopez, The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971)
90. and Jean Favier, Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Higgitt (New York, 1998)
91. Robert S. Lopez, "Nouveaux documents sur les marchands italiens en Chine à l'époque mongole," Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres: Comptes-rendus (1977), pp. 445-57, at pp. 453-55
92. J. R. S. Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford, 1988), pp. 122-40
93. Timothy Morton, The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic, Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 42 (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), pp. 53-54
94. On the riches and wonders of the East, see Rudolf Wittkower, "Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 159-97
95. Wittkower, "Marco Polo and the Pictorial Tradition of the Marvels of the East," in Oriente poliano, ed. É. Balazs et al. (Rome, 1957), pp. 155-72
96. both reprinted in Wittkower, Allegory and the Migration of Symbols (London, 1977), pp. 45-74 and 75-92
97. Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400-1600 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988)
98. and Joan-Pau Rubies, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India through European Eyes, 1250-1625 (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), pp. 35-124
99. Das Arzneidrogenbuch Circa Instans in einer Fassung des XIII. Jahrhunderts aus der Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen, ed. Hans Wölfel (Hamburg, 1939), p. 91: "Cum enim debet colligi propter copiam serpencium ibi existencium opponitur ignis inter arbores ut serpentes comburantur aut fugiant, sed eadem ratione comburerentur arbores ipse."
100. The late-thirteenth-century Herbal of Rufinus quotes this passage but prefaces it with the statement "Dicunt etiam quidam quod piper sit nigrum per excoctionem": The Herbal of Rufinus, Edited from the Unique Manuscript, ed. Lynn Thorndike (Chicago, 1946), p. 238
101. Marco Polo, Milione 176, p. 579: ". . .il hi [i.e. Quilon, on the Malabar Coast] naist encore pevre en grant abondance; e se recuile dou mois de may et de jugn et de jugnet, e vos di que les arbres que font le pevre se plantent e le enaiguent et sunt arbres domesces."
102. Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio, ed. Anastasius van den Wyngaert in Sinica Franciscana 1 (1929), 9, pp. 439-40: "In hac autem contrata habetur piper per istum modum: nam primo nascitur in folia de elere, que folia iuxta magnos arbores plantantur, sicut hic nostre ponuntur vites. Hec folia producunt fructum ut uvarum racemi producuntur; in tanta autem producuntur quantitate quod quasi videntur frangi. Cum ipsum autem maturum est, viridis est coloris. . . ."
103. The passage on the fires is in a British Library manuscript noted in the Yule-Cordier edition, Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Henry Yule and Henri Cordier, 2 (London, 1913), p. 295, n. 8: "Et sunt etiam in isto nemore multi alii serpentes quos homines per stupam et paleas comburant, et sic ad colligendum piper secure accedunt."
104. Odoric of Pordenone, Relatio 9, p. 440: ". . . et sic vindemiatur sicut hic vindemiantur uve, ponendo illud in sole ut desiccetur. Quod cum desiccatum est, ipsum in vasis colocatur."
105. Cf. Ibn Battuta, who says that pepper resembles grape vines and is planted beside trees and that "most people in our country suppose that they roast them [the pepper fruit] with fire and that it is because of that they become crinkled, but it is not so since this results only from the action of the sun upon them": The Travels of Ibn Batcombining dot belowtcombining dot belowūtcombining dot belowa, A.D. 1325-1354, trans. H. A. R. Gibb with C. F. Beckingham, 4, Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., 178 (London, 1994), p. 807
106. Cathay and the Way Thither, 2:342: "E ivi cosi grande abondanza di pepe come qui in nostra terra di grano."
107. Mirabilia descripta - Les merveilles de l'Asie par le père Jourdain Catalani de Sévérac, ed. Henri Cordier (Paris, 1925), p. 116: "Piper est fructus herbae et semen quae est ad modum hederae quae ascendit super arbores, et facit ad modum lambruscae, quasi uuam; quod est primo viride; deinde cum pervenit ad maturitatem, efficitur totum nigrum et rugatum, prout potestis videre. Sic etiam nascitur piper longum; nec credatis quod ponatur ignis ubi est piper, vel quod coquatur, sicut alicui volunt dicere mendose."
108. Mandeville's Travels exists in many languages and versions. For Mandeville on pepper (chapter 18 of his travels), see Le livre des merveilles du monde, ed. Christiane Deluz, Sources d'Histoire Médiévale 31 (Paris, 2000), pp. 318-20
109. Mandeville's Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour (Oxford, 1967), pp. 123-24
110. and Mandeville's Travels, ed. Malcolm Letts, 2 vols., Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., 101-2 (London, 1953), Egerton version in 1:121, Paris version in 2:324-25
111. The English metrical version states that the pepper forests are enchanted in such a way that no thievery can take place: Rosemary Tzanaki, Mandeville's Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the "Book" of Sir John Mandeville (1371-1550) (Aldershot, Eng., 2003), p. 107
112. Relatio Fr. Johannis de Marignolli, ed. Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana 1 (1929), 530
113. (also in "Kronika Jana z Marignoly," ed. Joseph Emler, Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, 3 [Prague, 1882], p. 496): "A festo autem sancti Stephani usque ad dominicam olivarum per mare Indicum pervenimus ad nobilissimam civitatem Indie, nomine Columbum ubi nascitur piper tocius orbis. Nascitur autem in vitibus, que plantantur ad modum vinearum omnino, et facit vitis primo racemos quasi labruscas viridis coloris, post facit quasi racemos et est intus vinum rubeum quod manu mea pro Salsa expressi in scutellam. Post maturantur et exsiccantur in arbore et arescit pre nimio calore et siccum excutitur parvo baculo cadens super linteamina et recollitur. Ista oculis vidi et manibus contrectavi mensibus XIV, nec comburitur, ut menciuntur scriptures, nec nascitur in desertis sed in ortis."
114. See above, n. 9. Niccolò de' Conti does, however, offer a naturalistic description of pepper, which grows like ivy, produces berries like those of the juniper, and is dried in the sun after being sprinkled with ashes: De l'Inde, lines 138-42, p. 96
115. Pierre d'Ailly, Ymago mundi, ed. Edmond Buron, 1 (Paris, 1930), 16 ("De mirabilibus Indie"), p. 264: "Apud hos crescit piper colore quidem albo sed tamen serpenta qui ibi habitant incendio nigredinem trahit"
116. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Historia rerum ubique gestarum, in Aeneae Sylvii Piccolominei . . . opera quae extant omnia (Basel, 1551; repr. Frankfurt, 1967), p. 288: ". . . serpentes assos in cicum pro deliciis habere, rubeasque formicas pipere conditas, paruulis gammaris similes."
117. Flint, Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus, pp. 47-64
118. E. G. Ravenstein, Martin Behaim, His Life and His Globe (London, 1908), p. 84: "In vil von de gebirg find man edelgestein und deamant aber um der schlangen willen sind sie verkumen."
119. The translation of this commentary is also given in Jardine, Worldly Goods (as above, n. 12), pp. 296-97
120. Ravenstein, Martin Behaim, pp. 89-90: ". . . dabey soll jederman vermerkhen die grosen zoll und den gewin. die 12 malen auf die specerey geht und zu mermalen von zehen pfundten eins muess geben zu zoll darbey zu verstehen ist das in den landt inorienten fast vil miss wachsen und wolfeil muss sein und das nit wunder wer man wis sy by enss den goldt geleich. . . ." In the late Middle Ages, northern European merchants such as Jacques Cœur did occasionally trade directly with the Levant, bypassing the Venetians, but this was a risky project
121. See Jacques Heers, Jacques Cœur, 1400-1456 (Paris, 1997), pp. 84-126
122. and Michel Mollat, Jacques Cœur ou l'esprit d'entreprise au XVe siècle (Paris, 1988), pp. 168-82. Of course, none of this affected the markup between East Asia and the Levant
123. Herman Pleij, Dreaming of Cockaigne: Medieval Fantasies of the Perfect Life, trans. Diane Webb (New York, 2001)
124. The letter is edited and commented on by Friedrich Zarncke, "Der Priester Johannes," in Abhandlungen der philologisch-historischen Classe der Königl. Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, 7 (Leipzig, 1879), pp. 827-1030 (edition at pp. 909-24)
125. On the letter see also Vsevolod Slessarev, Prester John, the Letter and the Legend (Minneapolis, 1959)
126. and articles of C. F. Beckingham collected in his Between Islam and Christendom: Travellers, Facts, and Legends in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Collected Studies Series 175 (London, 1983)
127. Ed. Zarncke, "Der Priester Johannes," p. 912. On the reiterated exaltation of gems in the letter, see Michael Uebel, "Imperial Fetishism: Prester John among the Natives," in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York, 2000), pp. 264-65
128. In the central part of Prester John's realms there are no poisonous snakes, but at the periphery, where the pepper groves are situated, strange and venomous creatures abound: István Bejczy, La Lettre du Prêtre Jean, une utopie médiévale (Paris, 2001), pp. 98-99
129. Marco Polo, Milione 159, p. 532: ". . . je vos di tout voiramant que il ha un grandisme palais, les que(1) est tout coverto d'or fin; tout en tel mainer come nos covron nostre maison de plo(n)be e nostre yglise, tout en tel mainere est cest palais covert d'or fin: que ce vaut tant qu'a poine se poroit conter. Et encore vos di que tout le pavimant de seç canbres, que asez hi n'i a, sunt ausint d'or fin, bien gros plus de II doies. . . ."
130. Ideas of Asian realms of gold include the twin islands of Chryse (gold) and Argyre (silver), thought to be particularly rich in these metals, mentioned in Pliny, Natural History 6.21-23
131. and Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium (as above, n. 2), 52.17, p. 186
132. and the so-called Golden Khersonese, perhaps a dim notion of Malaya: Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula before A.D. 1500 (Kuala Lumpur, 1961)
133. Jerome, Letter 125.3, in Epistulae, 3, ed. Isidor Hilberg, CSEL 56 (Vienna, 1918), p. 122: "ibi . . . montesque aurei, quos adire propter dracones et gryphas et inmensorum corporum monstra hominibus inpossibile est . . ."
134. Isidore, Etymologiarum sive originum libri xx 14.3.7, ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 (Oxford, 1911), p. 113
135. Hrabanus Maurus, De universo 4.4, in PL 111:335
136. also Honorius Augustodunensis in Imago mundi (as above, n. 8), 10, p. 53
137. "Montes aureos, a draconibus custoditur" appears on the Hereford Map: Scott D. Westrem, The Hereford Map, Terrarum Orbis 1 (Turnhout, 2001), p. 33
138. Folker E. Reichert, Begegnungen mit China: Die Entdeckung Ostasiens im Mittelalter, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 15 (Sigmaringen, 1992), pp. 109-10
139. Not the same as European and American rhubarb but the root of a different species, Rheum officinale, native to Tibet and credited with great medicinal properties in the Middle Ages; see Andrew Dalby, Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices (Berkeley, Calif., 2000), pp. 77-78
140. Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. M. R. B. Shaw (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1963), p. 212
141. St. Jerome, in Letter 125.3, writes of India where, "it is said," the Ganges carries spices ("pimentorum") from Paradise. Precious botanical substances brought by rivers from Paradise also appear in Circa Instans, ed. Wölfel, Arzneidrogenbuch (as above, n. 39), p. 4
142. Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis 86 (as above, n. 8), p. 173
143. Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzifal 8.845-50
144. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De proprietatibus rerum, a Critical Text, ed. M. C. Seymour et al., 2 (Oxford, 1975), 17.5, p. 905
145. Mandeville, books 8 and 25: Le livre des merveilles du inonde, pp. 163 and 398
146. Travels, ed. Seymour, pp. 41 and 174
147. Mandeville's Travels, ed. Letts, Egerton version, 1:41 and 1:167, Paris version, 2:258 and 2:365
148. On the location of Paradise, see Alessandro Scafi, "Mapping Eden: Cartographies of the Earthly Paradise," in Mappings, ed. Denis Cosgrove (London, 1999), pp. 50-70
149. On the Garden of Eden in general, see Jean Delumeau, History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition, trans. Matthew O'Connell (New York, 1995)
150. Technological and geographical progress are emphasized by William D. Phillips, Jr., and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), pp. 64-84
151. Pierre Chaunu, European Expansion in the Later Middle Ages, trans. Katarine Bertram, Europe in the Middle Ages 10 (Amsterdam, 1979)
152. Ingrid Baumgärtner, "Weltbild und Empire: Die Erweiterung des kartographischen Weltbilds durch die Asienreisen des späten Mittelalters," Journal of Medieval History 23 (1997), 227-53
153. and Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (as above, n. 36), pp. 187-253
154. The presence of Venetian and Genoese merchants resident in China in the early to mid-fourteenth century does show a willingness to make extremely long trading journeys, but on a small scale and generally for silk rather than for goods that were rare in the West. See Robert Lopez, "L'extrême frontière du commerce de l'Europe médiévale," Le moyen âge 69 (1963), 479-90
155. and "Nouveaux documents," pp. 445-57 (as above, n. 35)
156. Cited in John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven, Conn., 1999), pp. 141-44
157. See also Folker Reichert, "Columbus und Marco Polo - Asien in Amerika: Zur Literaturgeschichte der Entdeckungen," Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 15 (1988), 45-46
158. Michèle Guéret-Laferté, Sur les routes de l'Empire Mongol: Ordre et rhétorique des relations de voyages aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles, Nouvelle Bibliothèque du Moyen Âge 28 (Paris, 1994), pp. 241-44
159. In his historical survey La flor des estoires de la terre d'Orient, written in 1307, King Hetoum of Armenia says that in Cathay olive oil is rare, costly, and treasured as a sovereign medicine by the great and wealthy: Recueil des historiens des croisades: Documents arméniens, 2 (Paris, 1906), p. 261: ". . . et illud fere quod in illis partibus carius emitur et habetur est oleum olivarum, quoniam reges et magnates illud, quando modo aliquo reperitur, quasi precipuum medicamen cum magna diligentia faciunt custodiri."
160. According to some manuscripts of Mandeville's Travels, olive oil is believed in Cathay to have medicinal value (The Defective Version of Mandeville's Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour, Early English Text Society, O.S., 319 [Oxford, 2002], p. 105)
161. or at least its price is high (Tzanaki, Mandeville's Medieval Audiences, p. 275)
162. Jerome, Letter 146.2, CSEL 56 (as above, n. 61), p. 311: "omne, quod rarum est, plus adpetitur; puleium apud Indos pipere pretiosius est"
163. Isidore, Etymologiae, livre XVII (as above, n. 1), 9.59, p. 197
164. Walafrid Strabo, De cultura hortorum 302-4, in MGH Poetae 2:346: "Hoc puleium, apud Indorum tanti constare peritos / Fertur apud Gallos quanti valet Indica nigri / congeris piperis."
165. See McCormick, Origins of the European Economy (as above, n. 33), pp. 709-10
166. Columbus's expectations and disappointments are outlined in Phillips and Phillips, The World of Christopher Columbus, pp. 157-70
167. Pierre Delaveau, Les épices: Histoire, description et usage des différents épices, aromates et condiments (Paris, 1987), p. 72
168. Jardine, Worldly Goods (as above, n. 12), pp. 289-90.