Page:Notes upon Russia (volume 1, 1851).djvu/46

xviii In the first book of Hakluyt’s collection, under the title—

And from thence transferred into the—

Joannes de Plano Carpini, an Italian minorite, together with five other brothers of the order, the minorite Benedict of Poland, and the friars-preachers Ascelin, Simon de St. Quentin, Alexander, and Albert, were chosen to undertake a journey into the country of the Mongolians. As the devastations committed by these conquerors of Europe became more and more alarming, Pope Innocent IV, at the council of Lyons, in 1245, resolved to send the above-named monks as ambassadors to these formidable enemies of Christianity, in order to pacify them, or, if possible, to divert them from Europe, and to instigate them rather to a war against the Turks and Saracens. At the same time they were to endeavour to persuade the Mongolians to embrace the Christian faith, and in any case to gather every possible information respecting a people so little known.

Plano Carpini, together with Benedict, travelled through Bohemia and Poland to Kiev, and thence by the mouth of the Dnieper to the camp of Korrensa,