In early 1432, the Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, ordered the payment of 200 livres to his premier escuyer, Bertrandon de la Brocquière (c. 1400–59) for the purpose of a “long and secret voyage”. Departing from Ghent in February of the same year, Bertrandon travelled to Venice where he boarded a ship bound for Jaffa. There he joined a group of pilgrims who visited Jerusalem, but when the time come to return he parted company with them and set out to travel back to Europe overland rather than by sea. He passed through Syria, across Asia Minor and over the Bosporus to Constantinople, then still ruled by the Byzantine emperor. He continued on through Thrace and the Balkans before crossing the Danube at Belgrade to reach Catholic Hungary. On his return to Flanders in the summer of 1433, Bertrandon wrote an account of his travels and disclosed the reason behind them: to assess the feasibility of mounting an expedition to conquer Jerusalem (p. 84). That dream was of course never realized, but his travelogue, with its first-hand account of life in the fifteenth-century Levant, makes fascinating reading.
The English translation of Bertrandon's medieval French published in this book is by no means new, having first appeared in 1807. It is the work of Thomas Johnes (1748–1816), a Member of Parliament and developer of the Hafod estate in Ceredigion, who produced the first edition from his own printworks. That inevitably means that with the passing of the years it leaves something to be desired. The definitive text of Bertrandon's work did not become available until 1892 after Charles Schefer (1820–98) had edited it from the sole surviving manuscript, Bibliothèque nationale ms français 9087. Johnes had to base his version on that of Pierre Legrand d'Aussy (1737–1800) which appeared in Mémoires de l'Institut nationale des sciences et des arts: Sciences morales et politiques 5, 1804, 422–637. Unfortunately, d'Aussy did not publish the original text but a modern French rendering, so that Johnes was not basing his English translation on Bertrandon's own words. Moreover, d'Aussy left out a considerable part of the text. For example, Bertrandon described over several pages what he had heard about Prester John, the mythical Christian king of the east who could allegedly field an army of several million men. Perhaps such fantastical claims were deemed inappropriate in the rational atmosphere of Napoleonic France, as d'Aussy omitted it from his selection and thus it does not appear in Johnes’ version either. Thankfully, Johnes’ translation has now been superseded by the complete and accurate version of Galen R. Kline which was published by Peter Lang in 1988.
This reprint does at least include a new introduction by Morris Rossabi, which gives some helpful background on Bertrandon and places his work in the context of other fifteenth-century travelogues such as those of Zheng He and Ghiyāth al-Dīn Naqqāsh. Rossabi also points out that Kline's is the best translation and gives some helpful suggestions for further reading (p. xiv). On the other hand, at just eight pages, the introduction is not very long and omits a great deal. There is no discussion of Johnes or of the value of his translation, and the historical background to the text is sometimes presented rather clumsily. King Charles VII of France (1422–61) is referred to as “Charles II” (p. viii), and the conversion of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia into a mosque is described before the all-important detail that Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (p. ix). Bertrandon's assignment on his mission is described as being “to report on the Ottomans” (p. ix). In fact, for much of his journey Bertrandon was in lands controlled by the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and the Karamanid emir of Konya; it was the former who controlled Jerusalem at that time, not the Ottoman sultan. While the Ottomans are discussed, since Bertrandon crossed their territory, they are not by any means the primary focus of the work. Most puzzling of all, Rossabi goes into detail about Bertrandon's account of Prester John, apparently unaware that that particular passage does not appear in the translation that he is introducing (p. xiii).
At the end of the day, one is left wondering why this book has been published at all, given that it adds nothing to the 1807 version apart from the short introduction. The text has been scanned from the original typeface without any new footnotes, commentary or index. There is nothing to tell the reader that Bertrandon's “Cotthay” is in fact modern Kütahya and “Qulongue” is Konya (pp. 184, 200). The opportunity might have been taken to provide a clear and up-to-date map of the French traveller's itinerary but instead the one reprinted on p. xv mainly shows Central Asia and China, areas in which he never set foot. There seems little point either in reprinting Johnes’ two lengthy introductions. Not only do their barbed comments about the French betray their contemporary background in the Napoleonic wars (p. 43) but they are also hopelessly dated and inaccurate. For example, in his survey of previous French travellers to the Holy Land, Johnes misdates Bishop Arculf (fl. 680) by a hundred years (p. 4). In any case, for those who are curious to read the rather pompous musings of a nineteenth-century antiquary, Johnes’ translation is freely available on the internet at archive.org. There thus seems to be very little point in investing in this reprint.
