ANDREW OF LONGJUMEAU (Longumeau, Lonjumel, etc.), a French
Dominican, explorer and diplomatist. He accompanied the
mission under Friar Ascehn, sent by Pope Innocent IV. to
the Mongols in 1247; at the Tatar camp near Kars he met a
certain David, who next year (1248) appeared at the court
of King Louis IX. of
France in Cyprus. Andrew, who was now
with St Louis, interpreted to the king David's message, a
real or pretended offer of alliance from the Mongol general
Ilchikdai (Ilchikadai), and a proposal of a joint attack
upon the Islamic powers for the conquest of Syria. In
reply to this the French sovereign despatched Andrew as his
ambassador to the great Khan Kuyuk; with Longjumeau went his
brother (a monk) and several others--John Goderiche, John
of Carcassonne, Herbert "le sommelier," Gerbert of Sens,
Robert a clerk, a certain William, and an unnamed clerk of
Poissy. The party set out about the 16th of February 1249,
with letters from King Louis and the papal legate, and rich
presents, including a chapel-tent, lined with scarlet cloth
and embroidered with sacred pictures. From Cyprus they went
to the port of Antioch in Syria, and thence travelled for
a year to the khan's court, going ten leagues a day. Their
route led them through Persia, along the southern and eastern
shores of the Caspian (whose inland character, unconnected
with the outer ocean, their journey helped to demonstrate),
and probably through Talas, north-east of Tashkent. On
arrival at the supreme Mongol court--either that on the
Imyl river (near Lake Ala-kul and the present Russo-Chinese
frontier in the Altai), or more probably at or near Karakorum
itself, south-west of Lake Baikah--Andrew found Kuyuk Khan
dead, poisoned, as the envoy supposed, by Batu's agents.
The regent-mother Ogul Gaimish (the "Camus" of Rubruquis)
seems to have received and dismissed him with presents and
a letter for Louis IX., the latter a fine specimen of Mongol
insolence. But it is certain that before the friar had
quitted "Tartary"' Mangu Khan, Kuyuk's successor, had been
elected. Andrew's report to his sovereign, whom he rejoined
in 1251 at Caesarea in Palestine, appears to have been a
mixture of history and fable; the latter affects his narrative
of the Mongols' rise to greatness, and the struggles of their
leader, evidently Jenghiz Khan, with Prester John; it is still
more evident in the position assigned to the Tatar homeland,
close to the prison of Gog and Magog. On the other hand,
the envoy's account of Tatar manners is fairly accurate, and
his statements about Mongol Christianity and its prosperity,
though perhaps exaggerated (e.g. as to the 800 chapels
on wheels in the nomadic host), are based on fact. Mounds
of bones marked his road, witnesses of devastations which
other historians record in detail; Christian prisoners, from
Germany, he found in the heart of "Tartary" (at Talas);
the ceremony of passing between two fires he was compelled
to observe, as a bringer of gifts to a dead khan, gifts
which were of course treated by the Mongols as evidence of
submission. This insulting behaviour, and the language of
the letter with which Andrew reappeared, marked the mission
a failure: King Louis, says Joinville, "se repenti fort."
We only know of Andrew through references in other writers: see
especially William of Rubruquis in Recueil de voyages, iv. (Paris,
1839), pp. 261, 265, 279, 296, 310, 353, 363, 370; Joinville,
ed. Francisque Michel (1858, etc.), pp. 142, etc.; Jean Pierre
Sarrasin, in same vol., pp. 254-235; W.illiam of Nangis in
Recueil des historiens des Gaules, xx. 359-367; . Remusat,
Memoires sur les relations politiques des princes chretiens
. . . avec les . . . Mongols (1822, etc.), p. 52. (C. R. B.)
Initial text from 1911 encyclopedia -- Please update as needed
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