ABSTRACT
The one thing people know for sure about The Travels of Sir John Mandeville—which was probably composed about 1357, in French, probably on the continent—is that it was “the most popular secular book in circulation” in its day, a fact attested to by about 250 surviving manuscripts and 35 incunabular editions. Even cannibals can mean well in Mandeville’s Travels, and the firm belief of the people of Ryboth in their own devout, sober, kind intentions must give any reader pause. Ultimately the real lesson that Mandeville’s Travels teaches about the philosophical proximity of the West and the East—and the real reason for Sir John's “gret meruayle” and subsequent silence on the subject of Saracen espionage—is that the similarities are in fact deeper and more disturbing than even his charitable evaluations of Saracen doctrine might suggest.
