Seele des Seidenäffchens

From the mid-thirteenth century, fragmentary accounts of the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation appear in Latin European travellers’ reports. General analyses of the idea of transmigration in Europe have so far ignored these pieces of knowledge. Against this background, this article will first summarise the sources for the idea of the transmigration of souls in the Far East in late medieval travel literature. Such a concept contrasted sharply with Christian anthropological and eschatological teachings. For this reason, in a second step, the article will explore the question of how Far Eastern ideas of birth and death were received and contextualised in European discourse.