Last episode, I started to talk about Giovanni Carpine, the 65 year old overweight Franciscan given the mammoth diplomatic task of converting the Mongol khan to Christianity and convincing him not to trouble Latin Christian Europe again, or, failing that, to at least learn something of him and his terrifying people. To that end, Carpine left Lyon in the Spring of 1245 and off he went, travelling overland to Bohemia, north into Poland, and then east, and then rather further east still, meeting with Batu Khan roughly a year after his initial departure.