1509 map of the Black Sea by Ortelius.
YOU CAN LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE OR ON YOUR FAVOURITE PODCATCHER.
Today, it’s back to Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo. Back to Clavijo and back to the other Castilian envoys also. Back to the chronicle of their journey, a chronicle possibly based on thoughts jotted down along the way, a chronicle maybe made up of the narrative of Clavijo himself. That is generally how this text has been understood.
But some have questioned that assessment, not putting forward a definitive alternative so much as casting doubt on the idea that this is Clavijo’s own narrative. Perhaps it was instead that of the Dominican friar who went along with him, Alfonso Paez de Santa Maria, or perhaps Gomez de Salazar, or maybe some other, nameless to us, member of the embassy.
Here, I’ll be following the standard tradition of reading this as Clavijo, and that’s how I’ll read him as he makes his tumultuous way across the Black Sea, traverses snowy mountain passes, and starts the culinary adventure that is one of the highlights of the text.
And maybe it’s just my own unquenchable hunger and interest in food that’s speaking here, maybe just my own failure to see past the fog of time and translation, but this is the aspect of the book where I most see an individual behind it all, a personality and a taste. We’ll start to get into that here.
...
Hello and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the podcast that covers medieval history through the stories of its travellers. This is the part of the podcast where I tell you about the Patreon, where I tell you that at patreon.com/humancircus you can listen to episodes early, without advertising, and with a little extra on the end. And you can do that for the low monthly contribution of as little or as much as you want and feel comfortable with. That could be as little as a vending machine chocolate bar a month all the way up to a fancy coffee a month, or more, if you’re so inclined. This episode, I want to send my thanks to Barry for signing on, and to Legendairy Bovine. Thank you very much!
Last episode, Clavijo and the others finished their journey across the Mediterranean, and they stopped in at Constantinople. There, they saw the sites. They saw the Hagia Sophia. They saw the hippodrome with its ancient Serpent Column and its even more ancient Egyptian obelisk.
This episode, they have left all of that behind them, and so have we. We’re all headed east on the next stretch of the journey to Timur, and we’re trying our luck on the Black Sea. We’re stopping in Trebizond, journeying on through difficult mountains, and negotiating our way through their people and passes, finding traces of Timur along the way.
We pick up the story as the Castilians leave Constantinople on November the 14th with Trebizond their next major goal. In their record, there is a certain symmetry to their passage north to the Black Sea. On either side two castles, one Greek and the other Turkish, the Greek fallen in deserted ruins, the other still inhabited, a bit of an Anatolian microcosm that way. From one to the other had once stretched a chain, when both sides ruled as one and a toll was collected in order for ships to pass, but no longer. The travellers didn’t pay a toll. But they do say they came to shore for dinner that first night out of Constantinople, a comfortable sounding arrangement. After that, they continued on. With a carrack for company, they entered the Black Sea in the night and stuck close to the southern coast, heading east.
They were only a few hours in when the mast sprung, requiring them to go entirely by oar until repairs could be made, and it was pretty indicative of how the sea would be treating them. In very favourable weather, the trip to Trebizond could be managed in under a week, but that would not be the travellers’ experience.
The sea was, at this time, extremely well travelled by Italians, the coastline they would be following, dotted with Genoan controlled ports and consuls. However, these waters were not a place of peace. Clavijo’s vessel encountered ships sent out by the Genoan governor of Pera, out on the hunt for Venetians returning from the Sea of Azov. Those Venetians could be expected to be laden with riches from trade and, more importantly, to be completely unaware of the situation, of the way hostilities had again sparked go between the two cities. No news could have reached them yet of the current state of things. The first they could know of it would be the attacking Genoans.
There was, besides that, the weather. Our chronicler writes of a sea among high mountains with great rivers falling into it, saying that when the wind picked up, “the sea boil[ed] and r[ose] into great waves.” The party had experienced delays in getting out of Constantinople, and now it was mid-November, and the way ahead was going to be difficult. Maybe too difficult.
They were two days out of Constantinople, and already they found the wind perilous. There was thought of making a run for a nearby port, but that was thought to offer only more danger. They could only pull in closer to shore and wait.
In the middle of the night, the weather worsened. The winds and seas raised, and they attempted to maneuver their ship into the shelter of a carrack they were travelling with. They tried to row themselves into position, “they” meaning the men of the ship, not so much Clavijo and his companions I suspect. But their efforts were unsuccessful. With the gale that now raged around them, they could reach neither carrack nor port. They had no choice but to drop anchors, and at first, those found no purchase. Finally, as being blown onto the rocks became an ever more immediate risk, the anchors held them. There was a moment of relief.
They really experienced quite a number of this kind of near miss on their journey, and it would get worse. It would get worse immediately. The gale‘s intensity worsened. So much so that waves broke over the vessel, and all aboard readied themselves for death and the judgement of their God. They did so in the dark, losing any sense of direction and of their surroundings.
The carrack that was near them also attempted to drop anchors, but they would not hold. The ship was smashed on the shore, its people luckily managing to escape by boat, leaving the vessel and its contents to break apart, the debris becoming yet another hazard for our travellers’ ship to reckon with, the mast swinging about and showing every sign of cracking into their vessel. But it did not. They just continued to take on water and by sunrise were at risk of sinking.
With the dawn, came a change in the wind and an opportunity to improve their situation. There were few aboard though in any state to take advantage of it. By our chronicler’s account, the crew were more dead than alive from exhaustion, some enough so that if death were to come, they weren’t necessarily all that against it. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that.
The crew did manage to bring their ship to shore, and the ambassadors, struggling, to bring Enrique’s gifts for Timur safely on to dry land, snatching at opportunities between the violent crashing of the waves. Waves that soon broke the ship apart against the ground. They’d managed to retrieve their king’s presents, but it was quite a setback.
Horses had to be hired. Timur’s ambassador, who was travelling with them, had to be disguised as a Christian from Pera; the locals, likely enemies of Timur, might not have otherwise welcomed his presence. Travel had to be arranged to a carrack, anchored nearby, whose captain had agreed to take them and their goods aboard. And all of this went as smoothly as could be expected, so that on November the 22nd, the ambassadors were brought safely into port, not at Trebizond but at Pera, back where they'd started. No ship now could be found that could carry them on, and they were going to need to wait out the winter there, across the Golden Horn from Constantinople.
There would at least be more opportunities to visit that city again. They’d maybe call once more on the emperor’s non-essential relatives for assistance, their mission for now set aside. They were going to need to try again in the spring, to reach Timur before he had left his winter quarters.
By March, they were ready to do so.
They had secured a ship and paid for it to be armed, at great cost to themselves, and on March the 20th departed, their galley the first of the season to leave Pera, not going very far that first day, just to take on water outside the city, but finally, on the 21st to bring them, again, into the Black Sea. This time, things were going to be much easier.
Four months had made a world of difference, and mentions of near-drownings were notably lowered, fair winds much more prominently on display. The site of their lost November galley appeared and then faded away behind them. There was no reason to stop and visit.
They zipped along the coast now, set back only by the odd day of still or contrary winds, noting large groups of what they took to be Turkic soldiers gathered on the shores here or an uninhabited castle there. They stopped in at a Genoese port, just a humble collection of small houses within its walls, while outside, there were “ruins of great edifices, churches, and palaces,” a continuation on a theme.
Despite the benefits of spring sailing, they were troubled at times by intense fog and the undesirable air of mystery it lent their endeavour. Were they near to land or not? Had they passed the harbour or not yet reached it? On one such occasion, it was a dog that saved them.
As they wavered in the darkness with the sea rising around them, they suddenly heard the sound of barking and shouting drew the attention of people from a coastal castle. Between the dog, the people who set out lights to guide them, and the sailor who swam ahead with a lantern to help them navigate the rocks, they made it into the harbour.
That was where they spent Easter Sunday. The lord of that castle was not at home, but his lieutenant saw them comfortably settled with sheep and fowl, bread and wine, and they learned, in the way one picks up these little facts on one’s travels, that a nearby forest held the best wood for crossbow making in all of Anatolia. Maybe a little boasting on the part of their host, maybe something mentioned by someone on the boat who’d been this way before.
On Monday, the 31st of March, Clavijo and the rest sailed and reached a city belonging to that same lord, but again, he was not to be found. He was three days distant, they heard, with 40,000 men, fighting against the quote/unquote “son of the Turk.” One of the children of Bayezid.
This lord’s father had been killed by Bayezid, and he had been deprived of the family lands. So when Timur came calling, he was very much on board to take sides against the Ottoman sultan and take back what was his, even if it meant paying tribute to Timur once it was done. One had to pay tribute to someone, and the lord’s story was not an uncommon one. In the buildup to their confrontation, Timur and his people had actively sought out such men who might come to their side and sabotage the Ottoman cause.
Of course, all of this was very interesting to Clavijo and the other ambassadors. They’d been travelling since May of the previous year and would be delighted to find some intelligence as to their quarry. Maybe they could go and ask this lord, just three days distant. They wanted to, the text says, but their galley’s master likely did not much feel like idling away a week waiting for them.
In any case, there looked like being more chances ahead. At a place where small blacksmith shops were set up near the sea, the Greek lord was known to offer tribute to Timur. Slightly further on, the shores were dotted with villages that were said to provide some of the local Turkic lord’s 10,000-strong cavalry, and he too was said to pay tribute to Timur.
On the 11th of April, they reached Trebizond. They spent the night with the Genoans in their rather fine castle outside the city walls, waiting, as they had in Pera, for the emperor to summon them in.
And this was not the same one they’d met in Constantinople. This was not the Byzantine ruler. Trebizond had in the past been under the rule of Constantinople, but not for some time now, not since 1204 when as the Fourth Crusade engulfed the Byzantine capital, the descendants of a former emperor had seized the opportunity. They'd set up a successor state based in that city on the south coast of the Black Sea and sought from there to maintain their claim to legitimate rule of the entire Byzantine Empire. The rulers of Trebizond would eventually abandon that claim, but they would not be submitting again to the authority of Constantinople. In fact, they would, at least by a little, outlast the emperors of that city, only falling to Ottoman attacks in 1461, 8 years after Constantinople had.
When the Castilian ambassadors visited, they found a walled city by the water and in the suburbs outside its walls, some of its most beautiful parts, particularly a street of shops near the sea that Clavijo seems to have been most taken by. They found it under the rule of Manuel III, and on the 12th of April, the emperor called for them.
They described being received in an upper story of the palace by Manuel and his son, said they were wearing imperial robes and tall hats decorated with golden cords, crane feathers, and marten fur. They mentioned the emperor’s marital connection to the imperial family of Constantinople, the sort of diplomacy by marriage which Manuel actively pursued, over his reign marrying a daughter each to a Byzantine Emperor, a Siberian Despot, and the rulers of two powerful Turkic dynasties. They also noted that Manuel paid tribute to Timur, that other ruler who they were very much hoping to see at some point.
For two weeks, the ambassadors stayed in the city gathering what they needed. Then, on Sunday, April the 27th, they departed under the protection of guards that the emperor had provided, though not ones that would stay with them long. On Monday, as in the 28th, the next day, those guards turned back, fearful of enemies that lay ahead. It was not a promising start to this stretch of the journey, but Clavijo and the other Castilians would be carrying on regardless. And after this quick break, we’ll join them.
…
As our travellers continued on from Trebizond, they might have felt a little trepidation at the way their guards had abandoned them so quickly. What might the way ahead hold for them? What might the road have in store for them as they went south into the Pontic Mountains?
They may at first have felt some relief at being safely way off the waters, what with their near-disaster, really a full disaster, of the previous November, and there were reasons to be optimistic. That day they lost their escort, the road for travelling was good and their mountain surroundings beautiful, the natural vistas punctuated by rock-bound and unapproachable castles that but a handful of soldiers could hold against many. The landscape was beautiful, if severe. There were narrow passes and narrower paths, high peaks and deep snows. That day when the road for travelling had been good, it needed only a single, large fallen rock to completely block their way and cause them to set up camp early.
There were those natural obstacles, and then there were the tolls. The record of this journey is a helpful reminder that this was not quite a world of quote/unquote free trade or open borders, no matter how loosely those boundaries may have been defined.
At one point, the path ahead narrowed down, so that only one person at a time could pass between rock on one side and the foot of a castle on the other, and as the travellers approached, men came forth to meet them and to demand that they pay up before they passed. That castle was always full of thieves and bad men, Clavijo insisted, perhaps something he’d heard from one of the merchants they travelled with, and its lord himself was a thief. But this, this travellers’ tax/banditry, was the way of the land. They were going to need to get used to it.
Not much further along the road they had a similar experience, as a man rode out of another castle to meet them, to tell them that his lord was at war with the Turks and that it was only by what they plundered from their enemies or were gifted by passers-by that they survived. And could they go inside to see this lord, they asked. They could not, came the reply, but he would come out to them the next morning. And he did.
He came upon their camp that next morning with 30 armed and mounted men, and he too gave them the hard sell. This land, his land, it was barren and rough. They could see that very well for themselves. Between the harsh environment and the wars with the neighbours, he and his people had nothing to live on save what they fought for or pried from passing travellers, passing travellers like them. They were going to need to give him something.
The ambassadors argued that they could hardly be expected to pay, for they were not merchants but messengers. Their wealth was not really theirs, but that of the king of Castile. But the lord was unmoved. He didn’t care that these goods were gifts for Timur. He did not care when Timur’s envoy stepped forward and pointed out that all of this land was ruled over by the Emperor of Trebizond and that as the emperor was Timur’s vassal and all of these things were bound for Timur, they should be able to carry on unhindered.
To this, the lord responded that what the envoy said was all true enough, but as his people had nothing else to live on, it simply didn’t matter. Nor did the courteous speeches with which the travellers tried to sway him. Words, he said, were worth nothing, and fair enough. It was a bit much to have people parading through your land when times were tough and to have to listen to their protestations that no, these were not their luxury goods. No, not at all. These were just the belongings of this great and distant ruler, and they were being taken to that one. Besides, it’s not like he was killing them and simply helping himself to their goods. Not yet at least.
Eventually, the Castilians did cough up some scarlet cloth and a silver cup, and for this, they were allowed to travel on, having hired both horses and ten men to guard them, presumably also at some benefit to the local economy, as was the next toll they paid, further up the road, also to the same lord’s men.
After that though, the tone of their journey changed. The hard, narrow mountain roads continued, but the people along them were clearly better off. They seem to have possessed an entirely different culture when it came to receiving guests, or maybe they were just terrified of angering the Timurid ambassador who accompanied them, the punishment for failing to please such a man being a violent beating with sticks and whips. And I’m not sure if this is an issue of translation here, but Clavijo writes of these beatings that the number of blows given was, quote, “quite wonderful,” which is certainly an interesting choice of wording.
The ambassadors stopped in an Armenian town where they received lodging and food, and it must have been a pleasant change, a change which would stick as April became May. At every small town, they were offered water, food, and fresh horses. Carpets would be brought out for them to sit on, and little mats of printed leather on which the meals were set: bread, with meat, milk, eggs, cream, and honey. It would always be the best that the house had to offer, and if any further meat were desired, it would be brought too. It must have all been very pleasant after their time in the mountains. Clavijo didn’t much care for the bread though.
The description he offers sounds reasonable enough: a little kneaded dough that was formed into a very thin cake and then cooked in a pan over the fire, a flatbread of some sort. But to Clavijo, it was “very bad,” and not to his tastes.
The ambassadors stopped in the walled Armenian city of Erzincan. It sat on the riverbanks, on a plain surrounded by high, snowy mountains, a plain dotted with towns and orchards, grain fields, vineyards, and beautiful gardens. Erzincan was small but rich and densely populated, its fine streets of terraced houses, each with the sign of the cross cut into their stone walls. There were many mosques and churches, and much trade passed through that was bound for Syria and for Turkey.
The people of this city came out to greet the ambassadors before the gates and usher them into their prepared lodgings. They brought them meat with fruit, bread, and wine, and the following day the ruler of the city sent them money to see to their needs, and then guards and horses to bring them to him.
They found him taking shade beneath and silk canopy and they sat by him there. He was around 40, well built, with a black beard. He was dressed in gold-embroidered blue silk and wore a tall hat set with jewels and a crest of gold. He asked after their health and business and then drank wine with them from a silver cup. Then it was time for the meal.
Here in the story is where we really see the chronicler, perhaps Clavijo himself, step to the forefront as something of a food enthusiast, if not an outright lover of all things culinary then at least someone who saw in food an intriguing fault line along which to encounter other cultures. I’m not sure he would have put it exactly that way, but he is going to consider it worth reporting.
That day in Erzincan, he and the other members of his party sat with the city’s lord as mules were led in carrying wooden boxes of all that was needed: copper pots and iron knives, spoons and small bowls. Into the pots went meat, meat balls, and pickled mutton, with rice and other foodstuffs. Onto the ground went sheets of silk onto which the pots were placed, and they ate. They ate substantially, it sounds like. Then later that night the lord sent round more meat for the ambassadors, along with cooks and servers to prepare and serve it for them, and more money. They were well cared for there in Erzincan.
They called on that lord on another evening and found him by a fountain in the company of attendants, entertainers, and local notables. He welcomed them in and he called for wine, but not for everyone. He had previously noted that Clavijo didn’t drink wine, and being a good host declared that he and Clavijo that night would be drinking companions.
While the rest of the company settled into their own beverages, he and Clavijo shared sugared water from a crystal vase. And they ate. There was, of course, “much meat” with rice, followed by bowls of honey, peaches in vinegar, grapes, and capers, and all the while, the wine did not cease to flow, leaving only Clavijo and their host sober. It doesn’t sound like an unpleasant evening, especially in the context of life on the road, but the Castilians might not have enjoyed themselves much. There’s written mutterings of “unseemly customs” where the wine consumption was concerned and of how these people “ate dirtily.” I tend to think our travellers were a little ungrateful here for the hospitality they received.
After one and a half weeks of that treatment, they departed from their host’s city, that same day finding them back in the mountains, in the cold and in the snow. They passed through Armenian towns and heard the echoes of Timur’s actions, passed through land said to be ruled by one of his men. Saw the one town whose people had ransomed its churches from the conqueror, only to have him take the money and then go ahead and order their destruction anyways.
They came, on the 25th of May, to the “town of mad men,” or so they said the town’s name translated, a place where people came on pilgrimage and for their diseases to be healed, where the deeply religious would shave their heads and beards, and go about in rags, singing in the street whether by day or night, heat or freezing cold. At the gates of their hermitage hung a black pennant with a moon figure above and the horns of many animals hanging below. Timur had visited their lord, thought a saint, when he had come this way.
Everywhere, there were castles that Timur had besieged.
There was one ruled by a Latin Christian, populated by converted Armenians, and home to a monastery of Dominican friars. Houses and steps to its towers were cut into the very rock, and the castle itself seems to have been sheltered by the rock above it, so much so that it was ever kept dry from the rain. Between its rocky situation and the spring water that bubbled up within it, it was a difficult prize to take, even for one such as Timur, and indeed Timur did not take it. He settled for the support of its mounted men when he called for them, and for the lord-of-the-castle’s son who went away with Timur and was well-liked by him and sent to live with his own grandson.
There was another where thieves and bandits had been known to live who would plunder passing travellers on the road. And I’m not sure if that was slit-your-throat plunder or more like insist-you-pay-a-small-fee plunder, but that was how it was characterized to Clavijo. Timur had marched on this castle, whether out of civic duty or just because it happened to be in his way. He had stormed its walls and killed its lord, and then, to insure that the bandits couldn’t return to their work and defend themselves, he had removed the gates and ordered that the castle remain open, and he had left it to the lord’s widow. That was how it was when the travellers found it, and were welcomed by the lady of the castle.
The place was situated at the foot of a mountain, the very mountain where, as tradition had it, Noah’s ark had come to rest after the flood. The travellers’ road followed along the foot of this mountain, winding along past wild rye and streams and through the ruins of a town, said, in that land, to be the first town ever built after the flood and founded by Noah’s own sons.
As Clavijo and the others rested around midday, by a beautiful fountain near a stone arch, the clouds parted for a moment, and out of them appeared the peak of Noah’s mountain, lit by the sun. It was said to be a very rare occurrence.
It seemed a good omen, and it seems a good place for us to pause.
For all that Clavijo seemed to be close on the trail of Timur, his quarry was ever receding from his sight. They had intended to find him in his winter quarters, which they were not now far from, but for that, Clavijo had missed his chance. Among all those mentions of what Timur had done in these lands, came word that the conqueror had left those winter quarters and headed east. The Castilians’ long journey was only getting longer, and next episode, we’ll follow that journey.
I hope you’re enjoying the Clavijo story. If you are listening on the Patreon feed, you’ll be hearing from me again shortly. I’ll be back with a little mini-episode later in the week rather than the epilogue style ending I usually do. And whether you’re on the Patreon or not, I’ll be back soon with part 4 of the Clavijo series. I’ll talk to you then.