Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World - Jack Weatherford [148]
The increased demand for paper arose with the spread of printing. One of the most laborious tasks in medieval society had been the copying of manuscripts and documents, all of which had been done by hand in monasteries that functioned as book factories with scribes carefully copying all day in a large scriptorium. Aside from the cost of their meager food and basic upkeep, the labor was free and the money earned from the sale went to other uses within the church. Johannes Gutenberg completed the adaptation with his production of two hundred Bibles in 1455, and started the printing and information revolution in the West. The new technology made the relatively minor trade of book making into one of the most potent forces of public life. It stimulated the revival of Greek classics, the development of written forms of the vernacular languages, the growth of nationalism, the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation, the birth of science, and virtually every aspect of life and learning from agronomy to zoology.
The ideas of the Mongol Empire awakened new possibilities in the European mind. New knowledge from the travel writings of Marco Polo to the detailed star charts of Ulugh Beg proved that much of their received classical knowledge was simply wrong, and at the same time it opened up new paths of intellectual discovery. Because much of the Mongol Empire had been based on novel ideas and ways of organizing public life rather than on mere technology, these ideas provoked new thoughts and experiments in Europe. The common principles of the Mongol Empire—such as paper money, primacy of the state over the church, freedom of religion, diplomatic immunity, and international law—were ideas that gained new importance.
As early as 1620, the English scientist Francis Bacon recognized the impact that changing technology had produced in Europe. He designated printing, gunpowder, and the compass as three technological innovations on which the modern world was built. Although they were “unknown to the ancients . . . these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation.” More important than the innovations themselves, from them “innumerable changes have been thence derived.” In a clear recognition of their importance he wrote “that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.” All of them had been spread to the West during the era of the Mongol Empire.
Under the widespread influences from the paper and printing, gunpowder and firearms, and the spread of the navigational compass and other maritime equipment, Europeans experienced a Renaissance, literally a rebirth, but it was not the ancient world of Greece and Rome being reborn: It was the Mongol Empire, picked up, transferred, and adapted by the Europeans to their own needs and culture.
In May 1288, soon after meeting with Rabban Bar Sawma and receiving a letter and gifts from the Mongol court, Pope Nicholas IV issued a papal bull calling for construction of a new mother church at Assisi for his Franciscan order. As the first Franciscan pope, Nicholas IV, together with his fellow Franciscans, seemingly wanted to proclaim the coming of age of their order. For this project, they wanted imagery that not only proclaimed their new status but highlighted the accomplishments of the order. The Franciscans had the closest ties of any Europe group to the Mongol court. Among others, the monks in the delegation of Plano di Carpini, who had served as the first envoy to the Mongols at the time of Guyuk’s election as Great Khan, and William of Rubruck, who visited in the time of Mongke Khan’s installation, had all been Franciscans. The artists borrowed themes and techniques from the Chinese and Persian art brought in by the Mongols, quite possibly from the gifts brought by Rabban Bar Swama himself.
The paintings shared a common source in the work of Giotto di Bondone and his disciples, and they