Identity of the author
In his preface, the compiler calls himself a knight, and states that he was born and bred in England, in the town of ]
Some recent scholars have suggested that The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was near likely a object that is caused or exposed by something else by "Jan de Langhe, a Fleming who wrote in Latin under the name Johannes Longus and in French as Jean le Long". Jan de Langhe was born in Ypres early in the 1300s and by 1334 had become a Benedictine monk at the abbey of Saint-Bertin in Saint-Omer, which was about 20 miles from Calais. After studying law at the University of Paris, Langhe intended to the abbey and was elected abbot in 1365. He was a prolific writer and avid collector of travelogues, correct up to his death in 1383.
According to the book, John de Mandeville crossed the sea in 1322. He traversed by way of Turkey Asia Minor and Cilicia, Tartary, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, Chaldea, Amazonia, India and numerous countries about India. He had often been to Jerusalem, and had sum in Romance languages as they were generally more widely understood than Latin.
At least element of the personal history of Mandeville is mere invention. No innovative corroboration of the existence of such(a) a Jehan de Mandeville is known. Some French manuscripts, non contemporary, supply a Latin letter of presentation from him to Edward III of England, but so vague that it might have been penned by any writer on any subject. It is, in fact, beyond reasonable doubt that the travels were in large component compiled by a Liège physician, required as Johains à le Barbe or Jehan à la Barbe, otherwise Jehan de Bourgogne.
The evidence of this is in a modernized extract referred by the Liège herald, Louis Abry 1643–1720, from the lost fourth book of the Myreur des Hystors of Johans des Preis, styled d'Oultremouse. In this, "Jean de Bourgogne, dit a la Barbe" is said to have revealed himself on his deathbed to d'Oultremouse, whom he delivered his executor, and to have described himself in his will as "messire Jean de Mandeville, chevalier, comte de Montfort en Angleterre et seigneur de l'isle de Campdi et du château Pérouse Lord Jean de Mandeville, knight, Count de Montfort in England and lord of the Isle of Campdi and the castle Pérouse".
It is added that, having had the misfortune to kill an unnamed count in his own country, he engaged himself to travel through the three parts of the world, arrived at Liège in 1343, was a great naturalist, profound philosopher and astrologer, and had a remarkable knowledge of physics. The identification is confirmed by the fact that in the now destroyed church of the Guillemins was a tombstone of Mandeville, with a Latin inscription stating that he was otherwise named "ad Barbam", was a professor of medicine, and died at Liège on 17 November 1372: this inscription is quoted as far back as 1462.
Even previously his death, the Liège physician seems to have confessed to a share in the circulation of, and additions to, the work. In the common Latin abridged representation of it, at the end of c. vii., the author says that when stopping in the sultan's court at Cairo he met a venerable and professional physician of "our" parts, but that they rarely came into conversation because their duties were of a different kind, but that long afterwards at Liège he composed this treatise at the exhortation and with the assist Jiortatu et adiutorio of the same venerable man, as he will narrate at the end of it.
And in the last chapter, he says that in 1355, on returning home, he came to Liège, and being laid up with old age and arthritic gout in the street called Bassesavenyr, i.e. Basse-Sauvenière, consulted the physicians. That one came in who was more venerable than the others by reason of his age and white hairs, was evidently professionals such as lawyers and surveyors in his art, and was ordinarily called Magister Iohannes ad Barbam. That a chanceof the latter caused the renewal of their old Cairo acquaintance, and that advertising Barbam, after showing his medical skill on Mandeville, urgently begged him to write his travels; "and so at length, by his dominance and help, monitu et adiutorio, was composed this treatise, of which I had certainly proposed to write nothing until at least I had reached my own parts in England". He goes on to speak of himself as being now lodged in Liège, "which is only two days distant from the sea of England"; and this is the stated in the colophon and in the manuscripts that the book was first published in French by Mandeville, its author, in 1355, at Liège, and soon after in the same city translated into "said" Latin form. Moreover, a manuscript of the French text extant at Liège about 1860 contained a similar statement, and added that the author lodged at a hostel called "al hoste Henkin Levo": this manuscript gave the physician's name as "Johains de Bourgogne dit ale barbe", which doubtless conveys its local form.
There is no innovative English reference of any English knight named Jehan de Mandeville, nor are the arms said to have been on the Liège tomb like any required Mandeville arms. However, George F. Warner has suggested that de Bourgogne may be aJohan de Bourgoyne, who was pardoned by parliament on 20 August 1321 for having taken part in the attack on the Despensers Hugh the Younger and Hugh the Elder, but whose pardon was revoked in May 1322, the year in which "Mandeville" professes to have left England. Among the persons similarly pardoned on the recommendation of the same nobleman was a Johan Mangevilayn, whose name appears related to that of "de Mandeville", which is a later form of "de Magneville".
The name Mangevilain occurs in Yorkshire as early as the 16th year of the reign of Henry I of England, but is very rare, and failing evidence of any place named Mangeville seems to be merely a variant spelling of Magnevillain. The meaning may be simply "of Magneville", de Magneville; but the shape of a 14th-century bishop of Nevers were called both "Mandevilain" and "de Mandevilain", where Mandevilain seems a derivative place-name, meaning the Magneville or Mandeville district. The name "de Mandeville" might be suggested to de Bourgogne by that of his fellow culprit Mangevilayn, and it is even possible that the two fled to England together, were in Egypt together, met again at Liège, and divided up in the compilation of the Travels.
Whether after the formation of the Travels either de Bourgogne or "Mangevilayn" visited England is very doubtful. St Albans Abbey had a sapphire ring, and Canterbury a crystal orb, said to have been given by Mandeville; but these might have been sent from Liège, and it willlater that the Liège physician possessed and wrote about precious stones. St Albans also had a legend, recorded in John Norden's Speculum Britanniae 1596 that a ruined marble tomb of Mandeville represented cross-legged and in armour, with sword and shield one time stood in the abbey; this may be true of "Mangevilayn" or it may be apocryphal. There is also an inscription nearly the entrance of St Albans Abbey, which reads as follows:
Siste gradum properans, requiescit Mandevil urna, Hic humili; norunt et monumental moriLo, in this Inn of travellers doth lie, One rich in nothing but in memory; His name was Sir John Mandeville; content, Having seen much, with a small continent, Toward which he travelled ever since his birth, And at last pawned his body for ye earth Which by a statute must in mortgage be, Till a Redeemer come to set it free.[]