CARPINI, JOANNES DE PLANO, the first noteworthy European explorer of the Mongol empire (in the 13th century), and the author of the earliest important Western work on northern and central Asia, Russian Europe, and other regions of the Tatar dominion. He appears to have been a native of Umbria, where a place formerly called Pian del Carpine, but now Piano della Magione, stands near Perugia, on the road to Cortona. He was one of the companions and disciples of his countryman St Francis of Assisi, and from sundry indications can hardly have been younger than the latter, born in 1182. Joannes bore a high repute in the order, and took a foremost part in the propagation of its teaching in northern Europe, holding successively the offices of warden (_custos_) in Saxony, and of provincial (_minister_) of Germany, and afterwards of Spain, perhaps of Barbary, and of Cologne. He was in the last post at the time of the great Mongol invasion of eastern Europe and of the disastrous battle of Liegnitz (April 9, 1241), which threatened to cast European Christendom beneath the feet of barbarous hordes. The dread of the Tatars was, however, still on men's mind four years later, when Pope Innocent IV. despatched the first formal Catholic mission to the Mongols (1245), partly to protest against the latter's invasion of Christian lands, partly to gain trustworthy information regarding the hordes and their purposes; behind there may have lurked the beginnings of a policy much developed in after-time--that of opening diplomatic intercourse with a power whose alliance might be invaluable against Islam.
At the head of this mission the pope placed Friar Joannes, at this time certainly not far from sixty-five years of age; and to his discretion nearly everything in the accomplishment of the mission seems to have been left. The legate started from Lyons, where the pope then resided, on Easter day (April 16, 1245), accompanied by another friar, one Stephen of Bohemia, who broke down at Kanev near Kiev, and was left behind. After seeking counsel of an old friend, Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia, Carpini was joined at Breslau by another Minorite, Benedict the Pole, appointed to act as interpreter. The onward journey lay by Kiev; the Tatar posts were entered at Kanev; and thence the route ran across the Dnieper (_Neper, Nepere_, in Carpini and Benedict) to the Don and Volga (_Ethil_ in Benedict; Carpini is the first Western to give us the modern name). Upon the last-named stood the _Ordu_ or camp of Batu, the famous conqueror of eastern Europe, and the supreme Mongol commander on the western frontiers of the empire, as well as one of the most senior princes of the house of Jenghiz. Here the envoys, with their presents, had to pass between two fires, before being presented to the prince (beginning of April 1246). Batu ordered them to proceed onward to the court of the supreme khan in Mongolia; and on Easter day once more (April 8, 1246) they started on the second and most formidable part of their journey--"so ill," writes the legate, "that we could scarcely sit a horse; and throughout all that Lent our food had been nought but millet with salt and water, and with only snow melted in a kettle for drink." Their bodies were tightly bandaged to enable them to endure the excessive fatigue of this enormous ride, which led them across the _Jaec_ or Ural river, and north of the Caspian and the Aral to the Jaxartes or Syr Daria (_quidam fluvius magnus cujus nomen ignoramus_), and the Mahommedan cities which then stood on its banks; then along the shores of the Dzungarian lakes; and so forward, till, on the feast of St Mary Magdalene (July 22), they reached at last the imperial camp called _Sira Orda_ (i.e. Yellow Pavilion), near Karakorum and the Orkhon river--this stout-hearted old man having thus ridden something like 3000 m. in 106 days.