Start of the Descriptio in the Leiden manuscript (c. 1400)

The Descriptio Europae Orientalis ('Description of Eastern Europe') is an anonymous Latin geographical treatise written in France in the spring of 1308.[1] It was written for Charles, Count of Valois, who was preparing a crusade against the Byzantine Empire in furtherance of his claim to Constantinople and who entered into an alliance with King Stefan Milutin of Serbia.[2] The author was a Catholic hostile to the Orthodox and to the Serbian Bogomils.[1] He was probably a Dominican.[1][3] According to one hypothesis, the author was Andreas Hungarus, a Hungarian priest who became the archbishop of Bar in Albania in 1307.[4]

The countries covered in the Descriptio are Albania, Bohemia, Bulgaria, Halych (Ruthenia), Hungary, Poland, Serbia (Rascia) and the Byzantine Empire. The geography, politics, culture and economy of these kingdoms are described.[1] It has been argued that his knowledge of Albania and Hungary was better than that of countries further east.[4] He mislocates Trebizond and Sinope. His sources included texts like the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, the Flor des estoires de la terre d'Orient of Hayton of Korykos and a version of the lost Hungarian Urgesta.[1]

The Descriptio is preserved in five manuscripts, the earliest from the 14th century.[1] The text has been translated into Hungarian, Romanian and Serbian.[1][5] There is an English translation of the section relating to Albania.[6]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Grzesik 2010.
  2. ↑ Leopold 2000, pp. 32–33.
  3. ↑ Elsie 2003, p. 23.
  4. 1 2 Madgearu 2008, p. 30.
  5. ↑ Latin edition with Serbian translation in Živković et al. 2013, pp. 93–148.
  6. ↑ In Elsie 2003, pp. 23–25.

Bibliography

  • Elsie, Robert, ed. (2003). Early Albania: A Reader of Historical Texts, 11th–17th Centuries. Harrassowitz Verlag.
  • Grzesik, Ryszard (2010). "Descriptio Europae Orientalis". In Graeme Dunphy (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle. Vol. 1. Brill. pp. 518–519.
  • Leopold, Antony R. (2000). How to Recover the Holy Land: The Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries. Ashgate. ISBN 9780754601203.
  • Madgearu, Alexandru (2008). The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins. The Scarecrow Press.
  • Živković, Tibor; Petrović, Vladeta; Uzelac, Aleksandar; Kunčer, Dragana, eds. (2013). Anonymi Descriptio Europae Orientalis = Anonimov Opis istočne Evrope: kritičko izdanje teksta na latinskom jeziku, prevod i filološka analiza Dragana Kunčer (PDF). Istorijski institut Beograd. ISBN 9788677431020.
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