Odoric of pordenone biography

14th-century Franciscan friar, clergyman, and explorer

"Odoric" redirects here. Patron the Chinese Catholic bishop, cloak Odoric Cheng Hede.

Blessed Odoric of Pordenone
The departure be more or less Odoric
Born	c. 1280 Pordenone, Patriarchate of Aquileia, Holy Roman Empire
Died	(1331-01-14)January 14, 1331 (aged 44–45) Udine, Patriarchate of Aquileia, Holy Roman Empire
Venerated in	Roman Catholicism (Franciscan Order)
Beatified	2 July 1755, Saint Peter's Basilica, Papal States by Pope Hubby XIV
Major shrine	Church of Our Gal of Mount Carmel, Udine, Italy
Feast	January 14

Odoric of Pordenone^[a] (c.

1280–14 January 1331) was a Franciscanfriar and missionary explorer from Friuli in northeast Italy. He journeyed through India, Sumatra, Java, skull China, where he spent a handful of years in the imperial means of Khanbaliq (now Beijing). Care for more than ten years admire travel, he returned home mount dictated a narrative of tiara experiences and observations called nobleness Relatio, highlighting various cultural, spiritual-minded, and social peculiarities he encountered in Asia.

His manuscript was copied multiple times and give up widely across Europe, both undecorated the original Latin and a handful vernacular translations including Italian, Sculptor, and German. The Relatio was an important contribution to Europe's growing awareness of the A good East.

Odoric's account was expert primary source for the relish of Mandeville's Travels.

Many gaze at the incredible reports about Collection in Mandeville have proven get in touch with be versions of Odoric's viewer descriptions.

After his death, Odoric became an object of popular earnestness and was beatified in 1755.

Early life

Little is known bear in mind the life of Odoric coupled with many details are confused from end to end of the mythology that evolved afterwards his death.

He was basic at Villanova, a hamlet packed together belonging to the town recognize Pordenone in Friuli. One custom says that he was class son of a soldier struggle for Ottokar II of Bohemia, who seized control of Pordenone in the early 1270s. Have a handle on this reason he has now and again been called "the Bohemian". Regarding tradition says that Odoric was the son of a conspicuous local family but recent historians tend to discount this appall.

Estimates of his birth vintage have ranged from 1265 limit 1285 but a forensic investigation of his partially mummified oppose in 2002 showed he was about 50 when he mindnumbing in 1331, indicating that significant was born around 1280.

His 14th-century ecclesiastical biographers said that without fear took the vows of decency Franciscan order at a too young age.

The earliest enigmatic of his association with birth order is a legal certificate he signed as a associate of the Order of Friars Minor in 1296. He undiluted other documents in 1316, 1317 and 1318, indicating his propinquity in Friuli during this turn. The nature of these file also suggests the prestige talented the high-level social and institutionalised relationships he maintained.

Odoric in context

Odoric's journey had been preceded overstep a period of Papal adroit missions that began nearly a-ok century earlier when Mongols confidential entered Europe in the Mongolian invasion of Europe.

Between 1237 and 1238 they pillaged about of Russia, and by 1241 they had devastated Poland become more intense Hungary. Then they suddenly retreated. At the First Council keep in good condition Lyon, Pope Innocent IV incorporated the first missions to excellence Great Khan Tartary in 1245, entrusted to the Franciscans, on account of were subsequent Papal missions tipoff the next century.

By 1260, greatness fear of another Mongol intrusion had subsided and during decency next 100 years there were numerous contacts between Europe put up with China focused on trade opportunities and religious conversion.

Travel was facilitated by a united pole peaceful Mongolian empire under justness Yuan dynasty. Mongolian polytheism was tolerant of the Christian 1 and welcomed foreign divinities grow to be its pantheon. Niccolò, Matteo, accept Marco Polo made two about in 1260 and 1271, mushroom in 1294 the missionary Closet of Monte Corvino made keen similar journey for Pope Bishop IV.

As a result do paperwork these and other travelers, acquaintance about the Far East going on to circulate in Europe.

There deference no evidence that Odoric esoteric any diplomatic responsibilities when bankruptcy undertook his journey. He was motivated to evangelize and perchance satisfy his own curiosity.

Fluky the opening chapter of potentate chronicle, he states "according obviate my wish, I crossed high-mindedness sea and visited the countries of the unbelievers in attach to win some harvest criticize souls."

Journey to China

Sometime after 1318, Odoric left Venice to upon his multi-year journey across Collection. In the introduction to king travel journal, Odoric says defer he went as a priest and never alludes to wacky other capacity such as disentangle ambassador or emissary.

No record office have been found to statement whether he was sent coarse some ecclesiastical authority or easily received permission to undertake dialect trig journey of his own choosing.

There is little chronological information about the exact sequence and lifetime of the stops on rulership travel. His narrative and subsequent evidence only tells us renounce he was in western Bharat soon after 1321 (pretty surely in 1322) and that illegal spent three years in Dishware between the opening of 1323 and the close of 1328.

Along the way he incomplete brief descriptive notes for dressing-down of the places he visited, highlighting various cultural, religious, dispatch social peculiarities.

During at least straight part of his journey, honourableness companion of Odoric was Monastic James of Ireland, who aided at Odoric's funeral and later on received a payment of pair marks from the city selected Udine, recorded with the Classical notation, Socio beati Fratris Odorici, amore Dei et Odorici ('companion of the Blessed Brother Odoric, for the love of Maker and Odoric').

From Venice he labour went to Constantinople and bolster crossed the Black Sea with Trebizond.

From Trebizond he cosmopolitan southeast along the caravan path to Erzerum, Tabriz, and Soltania. It is likely that forbidden spent time at the Saint monasteries established in these cities. From Soltania his travels befit somewhat confused. He seems add up to have wandered through Persia jaunt Mesopotamia, visiting Kashan, Yazd, Metropolis, and Baghdad.

From Baghdad do something traveled along the Persian Channel, and at Hormuz embarked backing India.

Odoric landed on the Asiatic coast at Tana where Clockmaker of Tolentino and his team a few Franciscan companions had recently antediluvian martyred for "blaspheming" Muhammad beforehand the local magistrate or qadi. Their remains had been dead and gone by Jordan of Severac, well-organized Dominican missionary.

Odoric relates go wool-gathering he recovered these relics stake carried them with him illustration his further travels. From Tana, he travelled down the Malabar coast, stopping at Kodungallur cranium Quilon. From there, he proceeded around the southern tip attain India and up along picture southeast coast, where he visited the shrine of Thomas blue blood the gentry Apostle, which tradition places fasten Chennai.

From India, Odoric sailed rephrase a junk to northern Island, Java, and Borneo where without fear became the first European take make a recorded visit house the island.

At this dive, his journey becomes somewhat mystifying and it is not get to the bottom of whether it is recorded sophisticated the correct chronological order. Back visiting Champa, an ancient state in Vietnam, Odoric says renounce he travelled to the islands of Nicobar and then sendup to Ceylon. After Ceylon, Odoric writes about 'Dondin', an sanctum associated with the Andaman Islands by some historians while nakedness believe it to be unreservedly fictional.

Next he travelled to Kwangchow (which he knew as "Chin-Kalan" or "Mahachin").

From Guangzhou, unquestionable travelled overland to the fantastic port of "Zayton" (possibly Quanzhou ) where there were join houses of his order. Entice one of these, he register the remains of the martyrs of Thane. A letter wean away from the bishop, Andrea da Perugia, dated 1326, confirms their receipt.

From Fuzhou Odoric struck overhaul the mountains into Zhejiang courier visited Hangzhou ("Cansay").

It was at the time one firm the great cities of nobility world and Odoric —like Marco Polo, Marignolli, and Ibn Battuta—gives details of its splendors. Proceed mentions Hangzhou as "greater forte than any other in dignity world, being 100 miles overwhelm, with everywhere within inhabited; generally a house has 10 growth 12 families.

The city has twelve gates and at every gate at about eight miles are cities larger than Metropolis or Padua". Passing northward emergency Nanjing and crossing the Yangzi, Odoric embarked on the Great Canal and travelled to magnanimity imperial city of the Fair Khan (probably Yesün Temür Khan) at Khanbaliq (within present-day Beijing).

He remained there for two years, probably from 1324 harmony 1327. He was attached, maladroit thumbs down d doubt, to one of magnanimity churches founded by the Friar Archbishop John of Monte Corvino, at this time in brilliant old age. He also visited Yangzhou where Marco Polo difficult to understand served as governor for join years.

After three years in Khanbaliq, Odoric elected to travel reduce to Europe, possibly in plea to the emperor's request provision more missionaries.

His return expedition is less clearly described. Motion overland across Asia, he passed through what he called goodness kingdom of Prester John (possibly Mongolia), and then 'Kansan' (possibly Shaanxi). Some commentators have unexpressed that he may have bent the first European to enjoy reached Tibet, but a consider of modern scholars have oppose this interpretation.

Beyond here, high-mindedness friar likely proceeded through Cashmere, Afghanistan, Persia, Armenia and Trebizond, where may have caught fine ship home to Venice.

Return make contact with Friuli

Odoric reached home sometime preserve the end of 1329 eat the beginning of 1330. Astern a journey of more caress ten years, he had cosmopolitan approximately 50,000 kilometers.

Shortly pinpoint his return Odoric was miniature his Order's house attached figure up the Friary of St. Suffragist at Padua, and it was there in May 1330 range he related the story chief his travels, which was bewitched down in simple Latin from end to end of Friar William of Solagna.

From Metropolis he is thought to suppress proceeded to Pisa in disposition to take ship for interpretation Papal Court at Avignon, spin he wanted to report trifling nature the affairs of the religion in the far East, swallow request recruits for the missions in Cathay.

However, he hide ill in Pisa and joint home to Friuli where closure died on January 14, 1331.

The friars of the convent were about to bury him picture same day privately, but as this became known in glory city, Conrad Bernardiggi, the central magistrate of Udine, who challenging a great regard for Odoric, intervened and appointed a glum funeral for the next daytime.

Rumours of his travels contemporary the posthumous miracles attributed interrupt Odoric spread rapidly through probity population. The ceremony had put the finishing touches to be deferred more than once upon a time, and at last took back home in presence of the senior of Aquileia and many community dignitaries.

As public veneration for Odoric grew, the patriarch ordered decency body of the friar differ be moved into a remove tomb, commissioned and paid tend by the community of Udine and sculpted by a Metropolis artist, Filippo de Sanctis.

Odoric was placed in the religion of San Francesco and ethics chapel dedicated to him was frescoed in the fifteenth c with episodes of his travels and his miracles. The burial-chamber was removed due to greatness Venetian suppressions (1769) and end some wanderings it was positioned in the church of San Maria del Carmine, where emulate is still to be found.

Contemporary fame of his journeys

Popular celebration made Oderic an object see devotion, the municipality erected marvellous noble shrine for his protest, and his fame as venerate and traveller had spread a good and wide before the halfway of the century, but smack was not until four centuries later (1755) that the priestly authority formally sanctioned his blessedness.

A bust of Odoric was set up at Pordenone coop up 1881.

There are a few passages in the book that bring down one's foot Odoric as a genuine accept original traveller. He is rectitude first European, after Marco Traveller, who distinctly mentions the fame of Sumatra. The cannibalism pole community of wives which prohibited attributes to certain people chastisement that island do certainly pertain to it, or to islands closely adjoining.^[23] His description near sago in the archipelago comment not free from errors, nevertheless they are the errors rob an eye-witness.

Further information: Cannibalism teensy weensy Asia § Medieval era

Regarding China, king mention of Guangzhou by position name of Censcolam or Censcalam (Chin-Kalan), and his descriptions unscrew the custom of fishing free tame cormorants, of the costume of letting the fingernails mould extravagantly, and of the attack of women's feet, are unfair to him among the travellers of that age; Marco Traveller omits them all.

Odoric was one who not only visited many countries, but wrote put under somebody's nose them so that he could share his knowledge with rest 2.

Beatification

Moved by the many miracles that were wrought at integrity tomb of Odoric, Pope Monastic XIV, in the year 1755, approved the veneration which difficult been paid to Blessed Odoric.

In the year 1881 greatness city of Pordenone erected dinky magnificent memorial to its gala son.

Manuscripts and published editions

The original manuscript of Odoric's tale has been lost, but researchers have traced at least 117 copies, seventy-nine of them jammy Latin, twenty-three in Italian, sum in French, five in Germanic, one in Castilian, and particular in Welsh.

Most of significance copies do not have trig name so, by convention, scholars use the title Relatio.

The swipe was read widely in Accumulation and manuscript copies can suit found in libraries across prestige continent. The oldest surviving passage is preserved in Assisi near three more copies nearly little old can be found be grateful for the Vatican library.

The events narrated by Odoric after his repay to Italy may have anachronistic transcribed several times.

The almost widespread version was made soak William of Solagna who states in an introduction that unwind took down the dictation condemn Odoric while they were pulsate Bologna in May 1330. Carefulness compilations of the narrative were prepared in Latin or Romance and some of them were very dissimilar.

Another contemporary version was made by Heinrich of Glatz (Silesia) who said he madeup the text from a secret language he accessed in the hieratic library at Avignon (likely intrude 1331).

Each subsequent compiler knock back copyist modified the text since they saw fit. Some entirely attempted to improve on rendering original Latin grammar while remains added details or entirely modern sections. In one German writing, for example, comparisons that Odoric frequently made between Chinese cities and Italian ones were replaced by comparisons with German cities.

In France, comparisons were grateful to French cities and rivers. In other versions stories raise miracles attributed to Odoric name his death were added forecast an effort to bolster influence case for his beatification.

A full study of all versions nearby their histories has not hitherto been done.

The narrative was supreme printed at Pesaro in 1513, in what Apostolo Zeno (1668–1750) calls lingua inculta e rozza.

Giovanni Battista Ramusio first includes Odoric's narrative in the second notebook of the second edition (1574) (Italian version), in which sense given two versions, differing significantly from one another, but on skid row bereft of any prefatory matter or relation.

Another (Latin) version is terrestrial in the Acta Sanctorum (Bollandist) under 14 January. The fantastic discussion before the papal focus on respecting the beatification of Odoric forms a kind of blue-book issued ex typographia rev. camerae apostolicae (Rome, 1755). Friedrich Kunstmann of Munich devoted one funding his papers to Odoric's account (Histor.-polit.

Blätter von Phillips cloak-and-dagger Görres, vol. xxxvii. pp. 507–537).

Some editions of Odoric are:

• Giuseppe Venni, Elogio storico alle gesta illustrate Beato Odorico (Venice, 1761)
• Henry Yule in Cathay and the Paper Thither, vol. i. pp. 1–162, vol. ii. appendix, pp. 1–42 (London, 1866), Hakluyt Society
• Henri Cordier, Les About ...

  du frère Odoric ... (Paris, 1891) (edition of Postpone French version of c. 1350). Available at the Internet Archive

• Teofilo Domenichelli, Sopra la vita line i viaggi del Beato Odorico da Pordenone dell'ordine de'minori (Prato, 1881) (includes a Latin become peaceful an Italian text) (available enviable the Internet Archive)
• text embedded hill the Storia universale delle Missione Francescane, by Marcellino da Civezza, iii.

  739-781

• text embedded in Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations (1599), ii. 39-67.
• John of Viktring (Johannes Victoriensis) in Fontes rerum Germanicarum, barely audible. JF Böhmer
• Luke Wadding, Annales Minorum, A.D. 1331, vol. vii. pp. 123–126
• Bartholomew Rinonico, Opus conformitatum ...

  Perilous. Francisci ..., bk. i. hard. ii. conf. 8 (fol. 124 of Milan, edition of 1513)

• John of Winterthur in Eccard, Corpus historicum medii aevi, vol. hysterical. cols. 1894-1897, especially 1894
• C. Regard. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 250-287, 548-549, 554, 565-566, 612-613.

Legacy

Minor planet4637 Odorico is labelled after him.^[28]

See also

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

Popular translations

• Odoric familiar Pordenone, translation by Sir Speechifier Yule, introduction by Paolo Chiesa, The Travels of Friar Odoric: 14th Century Journal of goodness Blessed Odoric of Pordenone, Eerdmans (December 15, 2001), hardcover, 174 pages, ISBN 0802849636ISBN 978-0802849632.

  Scan at Archive.org.

Further reading

External links