ABSTRACT
By the election of Pope Innocent IV in June 1243, the Curia had at its disposal some limited information about the invaders, beginning, no doubt, with the report which the Dominican Julian had addressed to the papal legate in Hungary and which had been registered in the Liber censuum. The pope was encouraged by this news, which had not been available at the time of the invasion, to send ambassadors to the grim new power that had arisen on Latin Christendom's eastern frontiers. The agenda for the First Council of Lyons included not just 'a remedy against the Tartars' but also a remedy for perennial problems such as Church reform. One example, possibly, is a Historia Tartarorum, known as the 'Tartar Relation', which a Franciscan calling himself C. de Bridia, who may have been one of the unnamed colleagues left behind in Batu's territory,12 completed on 30 July 1247 on the basis of information supplied by Carpini's party (primarily Benedict).
