Andrew of Longjumeau meets Mongol officials

1244

A Dominican friar sent by Pope Innocent IV met the Mongol general Baiju in Armenia. He carried a letter demanding the Mongols stop killing Christians and convert to Catholicism. The reply he brought home, predictably, was a demand for the pope's submission. The exchange revealed the vast gulf between European and Mongol conceptions of sovereignty, a misunderstanding that would persist through decades of failed diplomacy.