Article

Odoric of Pordenone (1265–1331): his vision of China and South-East Asia and his contribution to relations between Asia and Europe

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Odoric of Pordenone (1265–1331): his vision of China and South-East Asia and his contribution to relations between Asia and Europe

L. Bressan’s 1997 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society surveys the life, travels, and literary legacy of the Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone (c. 1265–1331), situating his Relatio de mirabilibus—dictated in 1330—as the second most important European source of knowledge about China and South-East Asia after Marco Polo’s Il Milione. Bressan’s overarching thesis is that Odoric, though a humble missionary without papal mandate, provided Europe with its first reliable observations of Chinese social life, named Sumatra for the first time in a European text, and was likely the first recorded European visitor to Borneo, thereby establishing a durable bridge of knowledge between the two hemispheres.

Summary

Bressan reconstructs Odoric’s journey from his departure in the Middle East through India, the South-East Asian archipelago, and into China proper, where he resided at Khanbaliq (Beijing) between 1324 and 1326. The friar’s account, dictated to William of Solagna in May 1330 at the Friary of St. Antony in Padua, was composed in simple Latin for a Franciscan audience rather than a general public, yet it circulated widely through 128 known manuscripts and was plagiarised extensively by the author of the Travels of Sir John Mandeville (p. 1, 10–11). Bressan emphasises that Odoric’s descriptions of China are remarkably precise—naming cities, describing administrative systems, and recording customs such as foot-binding, cormorant fishing, the use of paper currency, and restaurant dining—while his accounts of India and South-East Asia are vaguer and more susceptible to legendary embellishment (p. 14).

The article devotes substantial attention to Odoric’s South-East Asian observations, identifying the islands and kingdoms he named: Lamori (likely an island north-west of Sumatra), Summoltra (Sumatra, the first European use of this name), Botenigo (possibly Rejang), Iava (Java or Borneo), and Paten (identified by Robert Nicholl as the Oya–Mukah area of northern Borneo) (pp. 17–19). Bressan argues that the “dead sea” Odoric described near Paten corresponds to the violent currents of the Batang Lupar river, making Odoric the first recorded European visitor to Borneo (p. 19). The article concludes by weighing two hypotheses for Odoric’s route through the archipelago, favouring the more conventional passage through the Malacca Straits, consistent with the routes used by Arab, Indian, and Chinese navigators (p. 21).

Bressan also situates Odoric within the broader context of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century European–Mongol relations, tracing the succession of papal missions from John of Pian del Carpine (1245) through John of Montecorvino (1293) to Odoric himself and finally John Marignolli (1336–1345), and noting how the fall of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 severed these channels of contact for over a century (pp. 3–8, 15).

Key Findings

  • Odoric’s Relatio survives in 128 known manuscripts, the oldest being Assisi Ms 343 (AD 1331–1333); the text was plagiarised almost verbatim by the author of Mandeville’s Travels, which survived in approximately 300 manuscripts—more than Polo’s book (p. 10–11).
  • Odoric was the first European to record the practice of foot-binding in South China and the earliest known European description of cormorant fishing, both of which Marco Polo omitted (p. 1).
  • He was the first European to apply the name “Sumatra” to the island, and his description of “Paten” (with its “dead sea” and sago production) has been identified by Robert Nicholl as the Oya–Mukah region of northern Borneo, making Odoric the first recorded European visitor to that island (pp. 17–19).
  • Odoric described Chinese paper currency (banknotes), restaurant dining, the postal relay system, and the use of incense in court protocol—details entirely absent from Polo’s narrative (pp. 12–13).
  • His account of the South-East Asian archipelago claims 24,000 islands organised under sixty-four kingdoms, a figure that provided Europe’s only systematic information about the region for over 150 years (p. 17).
  • The Mongol empire’s collapse under the Ming dynasty in 1368 isolated China from European contact for approximately a century, meaning Odoric’s and his contemporaries’ writings remained the sole Western source of knowledge about the region until the age of maritime exploration (p. 15).

Conclusion

Bressan’s definitive takeaway is that Odoric of Pordenone, despite his modest origins and the legendary accretions that later editors added to his text, fulfilled a historical function comparable to Marco Polo’s: he opened Europe’s eyes to the scale, complexity, and sophistication of Asian civilisations at a moment when the Mongol peace made such contact possible. His work, transmitted through the Mandeville plagiarism and the manuscript tradition, sustained European awareness of Asia through the long silence that followed the Yuan dynasty’s fall, and his positive, non-eurocentric tone—recognising Asian achievements without condescension—made him a distinctive voice in the medieval travel literature (pp. 12–15, 20).

Context

  • The article was published in JMBRAS Vol. 70 (1997), reflecting the journal’s long-standing interest in South-East Asian historical connections; Bressan acknowledges the Malaysian Branch’s institutional role in preserving and disseminating such scholarship.
  • The critical editions listed in the appendix (Civezza 1859, Yule 1866, Wyngaert 1929) remain the standard reference texts for Odoric scholarship, and the 1982 International Congress in Pordenone produced the two-volume Atti that underpin much of Bressan’s analysis.

References