Infinite Mirrors - Appendices

Zsuzsanna Papp Reed, Matthew Paris on the Mongol Invasion in Europe, CELAMA 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022)

This is a novel, interdisciplinary study of the Mongol military campaign in Eastern Europe (1241-1242) — the North, as thirteenth-century Europeans saw the region — through the lens of contemporary English chronicler, Matthew Paris of St Albans Monastery. Tracing the journey of his sources, Papp Reed explores thirteenth-century information networks against the backdrop of the struggle between Emperor Frederick II and Pope Innocent IV. Parallel to the history of information, the subject of the study is the Chronica majora and its afterlife, Matthew’s chronicle world where the sometimes fictitious (and often very real) episodes of the Mongol story unfold. Tracing major landmarks in the meta-history of the Chronica majora, the author wishes to emancipate Matthew Paris as a historian — one in the series of a multitude of others who continue to write and rewrite the history of the Mongol invasion across centuries of historiography. The volume is a handy companion both to scholars of English historiography and those who want to read critically the oft-cited primary sources of the history of the Mongol military operations in Europe.

Zsuzsanna Papp Reed is a literary historian and medievalist, currently teaching at the Central European University, Vienna.