page_title: Odoric of Pordenone
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Odoric of Pordenone / Life
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Persépolis, vue des ruinesEnglish: Persepolis , view the ruinsفارسی: تخت جمشید ، نمای مخروبه ها
context_page_description: Odoric of Pordenone, OFM, also known as Odorico Mattiussi/Mattiuzzi or Odoricus of Friuli, was an Italian late-medieval Franciscan friar and missionary explorer. His account of his visit to China was an important source for the account of John Mandeville. Many of the incredible reports in Mandeville have proven to be garbled versions of Odoric's eyewitness descriptions.
context_section_description: Odoric was born at Villanova, a hamlet now belonging to the town of Pordenone in Friuli, in or about 1286. He came from the Italian family of the Mattiussi, one of the families in charge of defending the town of Pordenone in the name of Ottokar II, King of Bohemia. Otto Hartig, writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, says his family was Czech.   Andrea Tilatti, in Treccani, says this is unsubstantiated.
  According to the ecclesiastical biographers, in early years he took the vows of the Franciscan order and joined their convent at Udine, the capital of Friuli. In 1296 Odoric went as a missionary to the Balkans, and then to the Mongols in southern Russia.
  Odoric was dispatched to the East in April 1318. Starting from Padua, he went to Constantinople via Venice and then crossed the Black Sea to Trebizond. From there he traveled and preached in Armenia, Media, and Persia. In all these countries the Franciscans had founded mission centers. From Sultanieh he proceeded by Kashan and Yazd, and turning thence followed a somewhat indirect route by Persepolis and the Shiraz and Baghdad regions, to the Persian Gulf. With another friar, James of Ireland, as his companion, he sailed from Ormus to India, landing at Thane, near Mumbai.
  At this city St Thomas of Tolentino and his three Franciscan companions had recently been martyred for "blaspheming" Muhammad before the local qadi during a domestic violence case. Their remains had been gathered by Jordan of Severac, a Dominican who had left them a short time before and who later became the first Catholic bishop in India. He interred them at the church in Supera, near Vasai, about 26 miles north of Mumbai. Odoric relates that he disinterred these relics and carried them with him on his further travels. He also visited Puri, giving one of the earliest accounts of the Chariot Festival of the Hindu God Jagannath to the western world  In his own account of 1321, Odoric reported how the people put the "idols" on chariots, and the King and Queen and all the people drew them from the "church" with song and music.
  From India, Odoric sailed in a junk to Sumatra, visiting various ports on the northern coast of that island. Thence, he visited Java, Borneo, Champa, and Guangzhou (which he knew as "Chin-Kalan" or "Mahachin"). From Guangzhou, he travelled overland to the great port of Quanzhou ("Zayton") where there were two houses of his order. In one of these, he deposited most of the remains of the Four Martyrs of Thane, although he continued to carry St Thomas's head until he delivered it to the Franciscans of the martyr's hometown of Tolentino.
  From Fuzhou Odoric struck across the mountains into Zhejiang and visited Hangzhou ("Cansay"). It was at the time one of the great cities of the world and Odoric —like Marco Polo, Marignolli, and Ibn Batuta—gives details of its splendors. Passing northward by Nanjing and crossing the Yangzi, Odoric embarked on the Grand Canal and travelled to the headquarters of the Great Khan (probably Yesün Temür Khan) at Khanbaliq (within present-day Beijing). He remained there for three years, probably from 1324 to 1327. He was attached, no doubt, to one of the churches founded by the Franciscan Archbishop John of Monte Corvino, at this time in extreme old age. He also visited Yangzhou where Katarina Vilioni's tombstone was found.
  Odoric did not return to Italy till the end of 1329 or the beginning of 1330; but, as regards intermediate dates, all that we can deduce from his narrative or other evidence is that he was in western India soon after 1321 (pretty certainly in 1322) and that he spent three years in China between the opening of 1323 and the close of 1328. On one of his trips, his ship was nearly capsized by a typhoon but they landed safely in Bolinao, Pangasinan, Philippines. He is said to have held a Mass there, in around 1324. That would have pre-dated the Mass celebrated in 1521 by Ferdinand Magellan, which is generally regarded as the first Mass in the Philippines, by some 197 years. However, historian William Henry Scott concluded after examining Odoric's wri
caption: The ancient Persian city of Persepolis through which Odoric passed. The columns are nearly 25 meters (84 feet) tall. Drawing by Eugène Flandin in 1840.
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