Giovanni de' Marignolli

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Giovanni de' Marignolli

Catholic European traveller to medieval China
and India.

Life

Early life

Giovanni was born, probably before 1290, to the noble

habit at the Franciscan basilica of Santa Croce at a young age. His work claims he later held the chair of theology at the University of Bologna.[16]

Departure

In 1338 he arrived at

Christ's salvation."[1]

In China

Quitting Almaliq in the winter of 1341, they crossed the

last emperor of the Yuan dynasty in China. An entry in the Chinese annals fixes the year of Marignolli's presentation by its mention of the arrival of the great horses from the kingdom of the Folang (i.e., Farang or Franks), one of which was 11 feet 6 inches in length, and 6 feet 8 inches high and black all over.[1] Marignolli stayed at Khanbaliq for three[16] or four years, after which he travelled through southern and eastern China to Quanzhou[17][18] (modern Xiamen), quitting China apparently in December 1347.[1] He had been impressed by the Christian community in China, its imperial support, and Chinese culture.[19]

Return

He reached Columbum (

Buddhist monasticism, the aboriginal races of Ceylon, and other marvels.[1][20]
The locals claimed that "Seyllan" (
Ormuz, the ruins of Babel, Bagdad, Mosul, Aleppo and thence to Damascus and Jerusalem.[1] In 1353, he arrived at Naples, whence he visited Florence before returning to Avignon[16] by the end of the year. There, he delivered a letter from the great khan to Pope Innocent VI.[1]

Later life

In the following year the

bishop of Bisignano[16] but he seems to have been in no hurry to reside there. He appears to have accompanied the emperor to Prague in 1354–1355; in 1356 he is found acting as envoy to the Pope from Florence; and in 1357 he is at Bologna.[1] That year, the emperor called him to be a councillor and his court historian.[16] At his behest,[1] Marignolli then compiled his Annals of Bohemia.[16]

We do not know when he died. The last trace of Marignolli is a letter addressed to him, which was found in the 18th century among the records in the chapter library at

Richard Fitz Ralph, a strenuous foe of the Franciscans, who had broken lances in controversy with Ockham and Burley. The letter implies that some intention had been intimated from Avignon of sending Marignolli to Ireland in connexion with matters then in debate—a project which stirs Fitz Ralph's wrath.[1]

Works

Marignolli's primary work was his Annals or Chronicles of Bohemia (Cronica Boemorum).[5][d] The fragmentary notes of Marignolli's eastern travels often contain vivid remembrance and graphic description, but combined with excessive vanity and an incoherent lapse from one thing to another. Henry Yule described Marignolli's digressions as "like unexpected fossils in a mud-bank"[18] but they have no claim to be called a narrative, and it is with no small pains that anything like a narrative can be pieced out of them. Indeed, the mode in which they were elicited illustrates how little medieval travellers thought of publication:[1] The emperor Charles, instead of urging his chaplain to write a history of his vast journeys, set him to the repugnant task of recasting the annals of Bohemia and the clerk consoled himself by salting the insipid stuff with interpolations, à propos de bottes, of his recollections of Asiatic travel.[21] Despite the sections of wonders in the work, he takes pains to deny the belief in the existence of nations of monsters or malformed humans, saying the truth is "no such people do exist as nations, though there may be an individual monster here and there".[22]

Nobody seems to have noticed the work until 1768,[21] when the chronicle was published in Dobner.[23] Thus in type, Marignolli again seems to have remained unread until 1820,[21] when a paper on his travels was published by Meinert.[24] Kunstmann devoted one of his papers on the ecclesiastical travellers of the Middle Ages to the account.[25]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The name also appears as Giovanni Marignolli,[2] dei Marignolli[3] and da Marignolli.[4]
  2. ^ The name also appears as Joannes de Marignolis de Florentia,[7] de Marignoli,[8] and Marignola Florentinus.[9]
  3. ^ The name also appears as John Marignolli,[13] de Marignola,[14] de Marignolli,[citation needed] and de' Marignolli.[15]
  4. ^ The Latin name also appears corrected as Chronicon Bohemiae.[16]

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Yule & Beazley 1911, p. 717.
  2. ^ Delumeau; et al., History of Paradise, p. 97.
  3. ^ a b Cowan (ed.), A Mapmaker's Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro..., p. 2.
  4. ^ Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes, p. 404
  5. ^ a b Kleinhenz (ed.), Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, "Geography and Cartography", p. 437.
  6. ^ Kunstmann (1856), p. 701.
  7. ^ Dobner (1768), p. 68.
  8. ^ Spinei, The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta..., p. 372.
  9. ^ Dobner (1768), p. i.
  10. ^ a b "A Last Mission to Cathay", A Portable Medieval Reader, pp. 303.
  11. ^ Khanmohamadi, In Light of Another's Word: European Ethnography in the Middle Ages, p. 57.
  12. ^ Friedman; et al. (eds.), "John of Marignolli", Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia.
  13. ^ Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy, p. 439.
  14. ^ Bell, A System of Geography, Popular and Scientific, Vol. VI, Marignola
  15. ^ Baldwin, "Missions to the East in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries", A History of the Crusades, Vol. V, p. 500.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k CE (1914).
  17. ^ Jeong, "Giovanni de' Marignolli", The Silk Road Encyclopedia.
  18. ^ a b Phillips, Before Orientalism, p. 40.
  19. ^ Arnold (1999), p. 135.
  20. ^ a b App, The Birth of Orientalism, p. 310.
  21. ^ a b c Yule & Beazley 1911, p. 718.
  22. ^ Phillips, The Medieval Expansion of Europe, p. 184
  23. ^ Dobner (1768).
  24. ^ Meinert (1820).
  25. ^ Kunstmann (1856).

Bibliography

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