John Mandeville - Further Information

Further Information

It remains to mention certain other works bearing the name of Mandeville or de Bourgogne.

To Mandeville (by whom de Bourgogne is clearly meant) Jean d'Outremeuse ascribes a Latin "lappidaire salon l'opinion des Indois", from which he quotes twelve passages, stating that the author (whom he calls knight, lord of Montfort, of Castelperouse, and of the isle of Campdi) had been "baillez en Alexandrie" seven years, and had been presented by a Saracen friend with some fine jewels which had passed into d'Outremeuse's own possession: of this Lapidaire, a French version, which seems to have been completed after 1479, has been several times printed. A manuscript of Mandeville's travels offered for sale in 1862 is said to have been divided into five books:

1. the travels
2. de là forme de la terre et comment et par queue manière elle fut faite
3. de la forme del ciel
4. des herbes selon les yndois et les phulosophes par de là
5. ly lapidaire—while the cataloguer supposed Mandeville to have been the author of a concluding piece entitled La Venianche de nostre Signeur Jhesu-Crist fayle par Vespasian fit del empereur de Romme et commeet lozeph daramathye fu deliures de la prizon. From the treatise on herbs a passage is quoted asserting it to have been composed in 1357 in honour of the author's natural lord, Edward III, king of England. This date is corroborated by the title of king of Scotland given to Edward, who had received from Baliol the surrender of the crown and kingly dignity on January 20, 1356, but on October 3, 1357 released King David and made peace with Scotland: unfortunately we are not told whether the treatise contains the author's name, and, if so, what name. Tanner (Bibliotheca) alleges that Mandeville wrote several books on medicine, and among the Ashmolean manuscripts in the Bodleian Library are a medical receipt by John de Magna Villa (No. 2479), an aichemical receipt by him (No. 1407), and another alchemical receipt by johannes de Villa Magna (No. 1441).

Finally, de Bourgogne wrote under his own name a treatise on the plague, extant in Latin, French and English texts, and in Latin and English abridgments. Herein he describes himself as Johannes de Burgundia, otherwise called cum Barba, citizen of Liège and professor of the art of medicine; says that he had practised forty years and had been in Liège in the plague of 1365; and adds that he had previously written a treatise on the cause of the plague, according to the indications of astrology (beginning Deus deorum), and another on distinguishing pestilential diseases (beginning Cum nimium propter instans tempus epidimiate). "Burgundia" is sometimes corrupted into "Burdegalia", and in English translations of the abridgment almost always appears as "Burdews" (Bordeaux, France) or the like manuscript Rawlinson D. 251 (15th century) in the Bodleian Library also contains a large number of English medical receipts, headed "Practica phisicalia Magistri Johannis de Burgundia".