Rabban Bar Sauma arrives at the court of France

1287

A Nestorian Christian monk born in China and sent as an envoy by the Mongol Ilkhanate reached Paris, where Philip IV received him, and then Bordeaux, where he gave communion to Edward I. His memoir is an eastern mirror of Marco Polo, too little read. His astonishment at the stained glass of the Sainte-Chapelle and the student riots of Paris offers a uniquely foreign perspective on medieval Europe.