after defeating the Hungarians. This came on the heels of the fall of Kiev a few
months earlier and within the context of smaller-scale forays into Moravia and
toward Vienna. The Mongol threat to Europe seemed more real than ever.^80 In
the face of the Mongols, eschatological and apocalyptic rumors and calcula-
tions sprang up everywhere.^81
References to the ten tribes in conjunction with the Mongols show how
potent was the Tartar ten tribes theory. The English chronicler Matthew of
Paris (c. 1200 – 1259 ) gives an account of a Hungarian bishop who interrogated
captured warriors from the Mongol army. He was very careful “to ask all the
crucial questions,” conducting what looked like an anthropological interview
based on a specific agenda. He tried hard to find out if the strangers were
“Jews,” asking if the prisoners had any dietary laws. The answer was no; they
ate “frogs, snakes, dogs, and all living beings indiscriminately.” This evidence
strengthened the suspicion that these were “Gog people.” Yet, the possibility
that these were the ten tribes persisted. The bishop’s account produced mixed
results: the prisoners knew nothing about the Jewish faith but apparently had
started learning “Hebrew characters” from “some pale men who used to fast
often and wore long vestments and did not attack anybody.” The bishop
believed that the anonymous teachers were “Pharisees and Sadducees.”^82
Matthew of Paris, for his part, was adamant that they were the ten tribes.
Attempting to reconcile these mixed impressions, he concluded:
Indeed it appears doubtful whether these Tartars... are the people
mentioned; for they do not speak in the Hebrew tongue, nor know the
Mosaic law... nor are they governed by the legal institutes. But the
reply to this is, that it nevertheless is probable that they are some of
those who were inclosed in the mountains.... And as in the time of
the government of Moses their rebellious hearts were perverted to an
evil way of thinking so that they follow strange gods and unknown
customs.... they are the Tartars, from a river called Tartar, which runs
through their mountains, through which they made their way.^83
But the Mongols’ “roles and levels of eschatological meaning varied greatly
as time went by.”^84 Whereas the thirteenth-century account of Matthew of Paris
unleashed the tribes from their enclosure, the fourteenth-century John of
Mandeville enclosed them back inside, this time with the implied help of the
Mongols. Perhaps no one better exemplifies the convergence of historical and
geographical realities, political and theological aspirations and fears, imagina-
tion and myth than Mandeville. Published between 1357 and 1371 , theTravels
were studied and quoted extensively thereafter, with the result that commen-
tary on the resultant “multitext,” as one scholar has dubbed it, is well beyond