The ''Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis'' (literally 'Book of the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross') is a

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

work by

Marino Sanuto the Elder Marino Sanuto (or Sanudo) Torsello (c. 1270–1343) was a Venetian statesman and geographer. He is best known for his lifelong attempts to revive the crusading spirit and movement; with this objective he wrote his '' Liber Secretorum Fidelium C ...

. It is one of the "recovery of the Holy Land" treatises intended to inspire a revival of the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

. It has also been named as ''Historia Hierosolymitana'' and ''Liber de expeditione Terrae Sanctae'', and ''Opus Terrae Sanctae'', the last being perhaps the proper title of the whole treatise as completed in three parts or "books". It was begun in March 1306, and finished (in its earliest form) in January 1307, when it was offered to

Pope Clement V Pope Clement V (; – 20 April 1314), born Raymond Bertrand de Got (also occasionally spelled ''de Guoth'' and ''de Goth''), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 5 June 1305 to his death, in April 1314. He is reme ...

as a manual for true Crusaders who desired the reconquest of the Holy Land. To this original ''Liber Secretorum'' Sanuto added largely; two other "books" were composed between December 1312 and September 1321, when the entire work was presented by the author to

Pope John XXII Pope John XXII (, , ; 1244 – 4 December 1334), born Jacques Duèze (or d'Euse), was head of the Catholic Church from 7 August 1316 to his death, in December 1334. He was the second and longest-reigning Avignon Papacy, Avignon Pope, elected by ...

, together with a map of the world, a map of

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

, a chart of the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

and west European coasts, and plans of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

Antioch Antioch on the Orontes (; , ) "Antioch on Daphne"; or "Antioch the Great"; ; ; ; ; ; ; . was a Hellenistic Greek city founded by Seleucus I Nicator in 300 BC. One of the most important Greek cities of the Hellenistic period, it served as ...

and

Acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

. A copy was also offered to the king of France, to whom Sanuto desired to commit the military and political leadership of the new crusade. This work has much to say of trade and trade-routes as well as of political and other history; and through its accompanying maps and plans it occupies an important place in the development of cartography.

Proposals

The crusading plans of the ''Secreta'' are double: first, Egypt and the

Muslim world The terms Islamic world and Muslim world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is ...

on the side towards Europe (Syria, Asia Minor, the Barbary States (

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

Granada Granada ( ; ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence ...

, etc.) are to be ruined by the absolute stoppage of all Christian trade with the same. By such an interdict Sanuto hopes that Egypt, dependent on its European and other imports of metals, provisions, weapons,

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into uniform and useful sizes (dimensional lumber), including beams and planks or boards. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, window frames). ...

, pitch and slaves, would be fatally weakened, and the way thus prepared for the second part of the campaign the armed attack of the crusading fleet and army on the

Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...

delta. With the aid of the Mongol

Tatars Tatars ( )Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary are a group of Turkic peoples across Eas ...

of Asia, natural allies of western Christendom, and of the Nubian Christian kingdom of

Makuria Makuria ( Old Nubian: , ''Dotawo''; ; ) was a medieval Nubian kingdom in what is today northern Sudan and southern Egypt. Its capital was Dongola (Old Nubian: ') in the fertile Dongola Reach, and the kingdom is sometimes known by the name of ...

, the conquest of the Delta and of all Egypt was to be followed by that of Palestine, invaded and held from Egypt. Sanuto deprecates any other route for the crusade, and unfolds his plan of campaign, his bases of supply, his sources for the supply of good seamen, with great detail. Not only Mediterranean seaports, but the lakes of North Italy and central Europe, and the

Hanseatic The Hanseatic League was a Middle Ages, medieval commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns in Central Europe, Central and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Growing from a few Northern Germany, North German towns in the ...

ports, are enumerated as nurseries of crusading mariners and marine skill. Finally, after the conquest of Egypt, Marino designs the establishment of a Christian fleet in the Indian Ocean to dominate and subjugate its coasts and islands. He also gives a sketch of the trade-routes crossing Persia and Egypt, as well as of the course of Indian trade from

Coromandel Coromandel may refer to: Places India *Coromandel Coast, India ** Presidency of Coromandel and Bengal Settlements **Dutch Coromandel * Coromandel, KGF, Karnataka, India New Zealand *Coromandel, New Zealand, a town on the Coromandel Peninsula *Cor ...

and

Gujarat Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...

to Hormuz and the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf, sometimes called the Arabian Gulf, is a Mediterranean seas, mediterranean sea in West Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Arabian Sea and the larger Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.Un ...

, and to

Aden Aden () is a port city located in Yemen in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula, on the north coast of the Gulf of Aden, positioned near the eastern approach to the Red Sea. It is situated approximately 170 km (110 mi) east of ...

and the Nile.

Maps

The maps and plans which illustrate the Secreta are probably (in the main, at least) the work of the great

portolan chart Portolan charts are nautical charts, first made in the 13th century in the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean basin and later expanded to include other regions. The word ''portolan'' comes from the Italian language, Italian ''portolano'', meaning " ...

draughtsman

Pietro Vesconte Pietro Vesconte (fl. 1310–1330) was a Genoese cartographer and geographer. A pioneer of the field of the portolan chart, he influenced Italian and Catalan mapmaking throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He appears to have been th ...

: practically the whole of this map-work corresponds with what Vesconte has left under his own name; much of it is indistinguishable. Among the plans that of Acre is of peculiar interest, being the most complete representation known of the great crusading fortress on the eve of its destruction, with the quarters of all its contingents of defenders (

Templars The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, mainly known as the Knights Templar, was a military order of the Catholic faith, and one of the most important military orders in Western Christianity. They were founded in 11 ...

, etc.) indicated. The chart of the Mediterranean and

Euxine The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

and of the Atlantic coasts of Europe is composed of five map-sheets, which together form a good example of the earliest scientific design or portolano; in the world-map a portolano of the Mediterranean world Is combined with work of pre-portolan type in remoter regions. Here the shore-lines of the countries well known to Italian mariners, from Flanders to

Azov Azov (, ), previously known as Azak ( Turki/ Kypchak: ), is a town in Rostov Oblast, Russia, situated on the Don River just from the Sea of Azov, which derives its name from the town. The population is History Early settlements in the vici ...

, are well laid down; the Caspian and the north German and

Scandinavia Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...

n coasts appear with an evident, though far slighter, relation to practical knowledge; and some idea is shown of the great continental rivers of the north, such as the Don,

Volga The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

Vistula The Vistula (; ) is the longest river in Poland and the ninth-longest in Europe, at in length. Its drainage basin, extending into three other countries apart from Poland, covers , of which is in Poland. The Vistula rises at Barania Góra i ...

Oxus The Amu Darya ( ),() also shortened to Amu and historically known as the Oxus ( ), is a major river in Central Asia, which flows through Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan. Rising in the Pamir Mountains, north of the Hindu Ku ...

and Syr Daria. Africa, away from the Mediterranean, is conventional, with its south-east projected, after the manner of

Idrisi Idrisi may refer to: *Muhammad al-Idrisi, 12th-century explorer, geographer and writer * IDRISI, a GIS computer program * İdrisqışlaq, Azerbaijan *Idrisid dynasty, the former ruling family of the Maghrib *Idrisid Emirate of Asir The Emirate ...

, so as to face Indian Asia, and with a western Nile traversing the continent to the Atlantic. Chinese and Indian Asia show little trace of the new knowledge which had been imparted by European pioneers from the

Polos The ''polos'' crown (plural ''poloi''; ) is a high cylindrical Crown (headgear), crown worn by mythological goddesses of the Ancient Near East and Anatolia and adopted by the ancient Greeks for imaging the mother goddesses Rhea (mythology), Rhea, ...

' time, and which appears so strikingly in the Catalan Atlas of 1375. Sanuto's Palestine map is remarkable for its space-defining network of lines, which roughly answer to a kind of scheme of latitude and longitude, though properly speaking they are not scientific at all. Of the Secreta, twenty-three MSS. exist, of which the chief are: Florence,

Biblioteca Riccardiana The Biblioteca Riccardiana is an Italian public library under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture (Italy), Ministry of Culture, located inside the Palazzo Medici Riccardi at 10 Via de’ Ginori in Florence, in the neighborhood comprising the Mer ...

, No. 237, 162 fols. (Secreta and Letters), with maps and plans on fols. 141, v.-144, r.; (2) London,

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, Addt. MSS., 27,376, 178 fols. with maps, &c. on fols. 18o, v.-190, r.; (3) Paris,

National Library A national library is a library established by a government as a country's preeminent repository of information. Unlike public library, public libraries, these rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuable, ...

, MSS. Lat. 4939, with maps, &c. on fols. 9, r.-I I, r. 27, 98–99. All these are of the 14th century.

Versions

A number of original manuscripts are known. Important manuscripts including maps include:K. Kretschmer
Marino Sanudo der Ältere und die Karten des Petrus Vesconte
Z. Ges. Erdk. Berlin 1891, page 355 * Rome:

Vatican Library The Vatican Apostolic Library (, ), more commonly known as the Vatican Library or informally as the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City, and is the city-state's national library. It was formally established in 1475, alth ...

lat. 2972 * Rome: Bibl. Regin. 548 * London:

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

27376 * Paris:

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

4939 * Brussels:

Royal Library of Belgium The Royal Library of Belgium ( ; ; , abbreviated ''KBR'' and sometimes nicknamed in French or in Dutch) is the national library of Belgium. The library has a history that goes back to the age of the Duke of Burgundy, Dukes of Burgundy. In ...

9404 * Brussels:

9347 * Florence:

237 * Florence:

Laurentian Library The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana or BML) is a historic library in Florence, Italy, containing more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books. Built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze u ...

XXi 23 * Naples:

Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III The (''Victor Emmanuel III National Library'') is a national library of Italy. It occupies the eastern wing of the 18th-century Palazzo Reale in Naples, at 1 Piazza del Plebiscito, and has entrances from piazza Trieste e Trento. It is funded an ...

35 Other manuscripts include:
Bodleian Library MS. Tanner 190, fols. 203v-204r

Valenciennes, Bibl. mun., ms. 0551
The Secreta has only once been printed entire, by Bongars, in ''Gesta Dei per Francos'', vol. ii. pp. 1–288 (Hanover, 1611). This was reprinted by the

University of Toronto Press The University of Toronto Press is a Canadian university press. Although it was founded in 1901, the press did not actually publish any books until 1911. The press originally printed only examination books and the university calendar. Its first s ...

in 1972 with an English foreword by

Joshua Prawer Joshua Prawer (; November 22, 1917 – April 30, 1990) was a notable Israelis, Israeli historian and a scholar of the Crusades and Kingdom of Jerusalem. His work often attempted to portray Crusader society as a forerunner to later European Colon ...

. * First printed version (1611): It was translated by Peter Lock and first published in 2011: * * Marino Sanudo Torsello, ''The Book of the Secrets of the Faithful of the Cross: Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis'', trans by Peter Lock, Crusade Texts in Translation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)

References

{{reflist Chronicles about the Crusades in Latin 14th-century books in Latin 14th-century maps Military books in Latin