Rubinstein’s fame as one of the greatest of pianists will live in history. His technique bore comparison with that of Liszt; he possessed a power for interpreting the most different kinds of music which has not been surpassed.
His brother Nikolaus (1835–1881) was also a remarkable pianist, and a marvellous teacher of music. He founded the conservatorium of music at Moscow.
See Bernhard Vogel, Anton Rubinstein, Biographischer Abriss (Leipzig, 1888); Alexander MacArthur, Anton Rubinstein, a Biographical Sketch (Edinburgh, 1889); Eugen Zabel, Anton Rubinstein, Ein Künstlerleben (Leipzig, 1892); Anton von Halten, Anton Rubinstein (Utrecht, 1886); Cuthbert H. Cronk, The Works of Anton Rubinstein (London, 1900).
RUBRIC (Fr. rubrique, Lat. rubrica, ruber, red), in its earliest and original sense, red earth or ochre, ruddle, and hence applied to words written or printed in red lettering, in MSS. or printed books, such as chapter headings, paragraphs, initial letters, &c., thus marking in a. distinctive manner that to which attention is to be drawn. The term was also applied to the passages so marked, and more especially to the directions or rules as to the conduct of divine service in liturgical books. This is the chief current usage of the term (see Liturgy).
RUBRUQUIS (or Rubrouck), WILLIAM OF (c. 1215–1270; fl. 1253–55), Franciscan friar, one of the chief medieval travellers and travel-writers. Nothing is known of him save what can be gathered from his own narrative, and from Roger Bacon, his contemporary and brother Franciscan. The name of Rubruquis (“Fratris Willielmi de Rubruquis”) is found in the imperfect MS. printed by Hakluyt in his collection, and followed in his English translation, as well as in the completer issue of the English by Purchas. Writers of the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries have called the traveller Risbroucke and Rysbrokius (Rysbroeck and Ruysbroek in the Biographie universelle and Nouv. biog. générale)—an error founded on the identification of his name of origin with Ruysbroeck in Brabant (a few miles
south of Brussels) and perhaps promoted by the fame of John of Ruysbroeck or Rysbroeck (1294–1381), a Belgian mystic, whose treatises have been reprinted as late as 1848. It is only within the last twenty years that attention has been called to the fact that Rubrouck is the name of a village and commune in old (medieval) French Flanders, belonging to the canton of Cassel in the department du Nord, and lying some 812 m. N.E. of St Omer. In the library of the latter city many medieval
documents exist referring expressly to de Rubroucks[1] of the 12th and 13th centuries. It may be fairly assumed that Friar William came from this place;[2] thus Hakluyt’s conclusion is justified, as expressed in the title he gives to Lord Lumley’s MS. printed by him, now in the British Museum, MSS. Reg., 14 C. xiii. fol. 225 r.–36 r. (Itinerarium fratris Willielmi de
Rubruquis de ordine fratrum Minorum, Galli, Anno gratie 1253, ad
partes Orientales.
Friar William went to Tartary under orders from Louis IX. (St Louis). That king, at an earlier date, viz. December 1248. when in Cyprus, had been visited by alleged envoys from Elchigaday (Ilchikadai, Ilchikdai), who commanded the Mongol hosts in Armenia and Persia. The king then dispatched a return mission consisting of Friar Andrew of Longjumeau or Lonjumel and other ecclesiastics, who carried presents and letters for both Ilchikadai and the Great Khan. They reached the court of the latter in the winter of 1249–50, when there was no actual khan on the throne; and they returned, along with Tatar envoys, bearing a letter to Louis from the Mongol regent-mother which was couched in terms so arrogant that the king repented sorely of having sent such a mission (“li rois se repenti fort quant il y envoia,” Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, pp. 148–49, in Paris edition of 1858 by F. Michel, Paulin Paris and F. Didot). These returned envoys reached the king when he was at Caesarea, therefore between March 1251 and May 1252. But not long after the king, hearing that the Tatar prince Sartak, son of Batu, was a “baptized Christian,” felt moved to open communication with him, and for this purpose deputed Friar William of Rubrouck. The former rebuff had made the king chary of sending formal embassies, and Friar William on every occasion, beginning with a sermon delivered in St Sophia’s on Palm Sunday (i.e. April 13th) 1253, disclaimed that character.
Various histories of St Louis, and other documents, give particulars of the despatch of the mission of Friar Andrew from Cyprus, but none mention that of Friar William; and the first dates given by the latter are those of his sermon at Constantinople, and of his entrance into the Black Sea (May 7th, 1253). He must therefore have received his commission at Acre, where the king was residing from May 1252 to the 29th of June 1253; but he had travelled by way of Constantinople, as has just been indicated, and there received letters to some of the Tatar chiefs from the emperor, who was at this time Baldwin de Courtenay, the last of the Latin dynasty.
The narrative of the journey is everywhere full of life and interest. The vast conquests of Jenghiz Khan were still in nominal dependence on his successors, at this time represented by Mangu Khan, reigning on the Mongolian steppes, but practically these conquests were splitting up into several great monarchies. Of these the Ulus of Juji, the eldest son of Jenghiz, formed the most westerly, and its ruler was Batu Khan, established on the Volga. Sartak is known in the history of the Mongols as Batu’s eldest son, and was appointed his successor, though he died immediately after his father (1256). The story of Sartak’s Christianity seems to have had some foundation; it was currently believed among Asiatic Christians, and it is alleged by Armenian writers that he had been brought up and baptized among the Russians. Pope Innocent IV. (August 29, 1254) refers with enthusiasm to Sartak’s baptism, of which he had just heard from a priest whom the khan had sent as envoy to the papal court.
Rubrouck and his party landed at Soldaia, or Sudak, on the Crimean coast, then a centre of intercourse between the Mediterranean world and what is now S. Russia. Equipped with horses and carts for the steppe, they travelled successively to the courts (i.e. the nomad camps) of Scacatai (Kadan?), Sartak and Batu, thus crossing the Don and arriving at the Volga: of both these rivers Friar William gives vivid and interesting sketches. Batu kept the travellers for sometime in suspense, and then referred them to the Great Khan himself, an order involving the enormous journey to Mongolia. The actual travelling of the party from the Crimea to the khan’s court near Karakorum cannot have been, on a rough calculation, less than 5000 m., and the return journey to Lajazzo in Cilicia would be longer by 500 to 700 m. The chief dates to be gathered from the narrative are as follows: the envoys embark on the “Euxine,” May 7th, 1253; reach Soldaia, May 21st, set out thence, June 1st; reach the camp of Sartak, July 31st; begin the journey from the camp of Batu E. across the steppes, September 16th; turn S.E., November 1st; reach the Talas river, November 8th; leave Cailac[3] (S. of Lake Balkash), November 30th; reach the camp of the Great Khan, December 27th, leave the camp of the Great Khan on or about July 10th, 1254; reach camp of Batu again, September 16th; leave Batu’s camp at Sarai, November 1st; arrive at the Iron Gate (Derbent), November 13th, Christmas spent at Nakhshivan or Nakhichevan (under Ararat); reach Antioch (from Lajazzo, Layes, or Ayas, of Cilicia, via Cyprus), June 29th, 1255; reach Tripoli, August 15th.
- ↑ A detailed notice of such documents was published by M. E. Coussemaker of Lille. See remarks by M. d’Avezac in Bull. de la Soc. de Géog., 2nd vol. for 1868. pp. 569–70.
- ↑ The county of Flanders was at this time a fief of the French crown (see Natalis de Wailly, Notes on Joinville, p. 576). William’s mother-tongue may have been Flemish. From his representation to Mangu Khan (p. 361) that certain “Teutonici” who had been carried away as slaves by a Tatar chief were “nostrae linguae,” Dr Franz Max Schmidt inclines to think this certain.
- ↑ Cailac, where Rubrouck halted twelve days, is undoubtedly the Kayalik of the historians of the Mongols, the position of which is somewhat indefinite. The narrative of Rubrouck shows that it must have been near the modern Kopal.
