1678

After Jan. 18. [294] G. de Boyx, miles, writes to Bishop Amadeus of Besançon, informing him that he and his wife are well and reporting the news he has heard relating to the Holy Land and the territories around. The kingdom of Jerusalem has a truce with the Sarraceni. The principality of Antioch, which has suffered greatly from the sultan of Egypt [soldanus Babilonie] and the king of Armenia, has for a long time had a truce with the sultan. G. de Boyx has heard that the Georgians have risen up and with a large army of milites and footsoldiers have taken 300 castles and 9 great cities, occupying the stronger ones and reducing the lesser ones to ashes. These include Baghdad [Predictarum urbium quedam sub Eufrate sita cunctarum urbium paganicarum erat nobilissima et magna], the lord of which, the son of the sultan of Egypt, has been captured by the Christians and beheaded, although he promised them enormous quantities of gold. G. predicts the recovery of Jerusalem. The Georgian king, who is 16 years old, is the equal of Alexander [the Great]. In fulfiment of a promise, he carries with him the bones of his mother Queen Thamar, who vowed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and asked her son to carry her bones to the church of the Holy Sepulchre if she should die. G. had heard in the last week of August that there had been a massive earthquake on 22 June in the land of Losore, which borders on the sultanate of Encoine, so great that many villae and castles were destroyed. So were 2 cities, and an abbey, close to the city called Finedelfe, had been swallowed up by the earth, together with its residents. A mountain was split in half and blood and milk flowed from it, together with stagnant water and gravel. The land in which this occurred is Christian.