IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
| IN'I'ROI) UC1'O K-Y NOTICES. | 173 |
to the see, though not approaching it within thousands of miles, but others were certainly bishops of a different diocese, which has been confounded with that of Cambalec.1
There is a curious notice of the proceedings and success of John of Montecorvino to be found in the chronicle of John of Winterthur, a Suabian Minorite,2 who finished his annals about the middle of the century. After mentioning the death of the friars at Tana in India, he goes on to say that a few years before that event, a certain Franciscan of Lower Germany had set out on a pilgrimage of evangelisation, and had written a letter to the chief of the Northern Vicariate, which the chronicler had seen, and in which a detailed account was given of the traveller's proceedings. The substance of this letter is then recited, and we find it to be in fact the same as that of the first letter of John Montecorvino from Cambalec, though his name is never mentioned but all is supposed to relate to the acts and sufferings of the Low German friar. Professor Kunstmann3 identifies this person with that Friar Arnold of Cologne whom Montecorvino mentions as having joined him about the year 1303-4. It is possible that this Arnold is in some way connected with the mistake, but it seems pretty certain that what the chronicler had seen was merely a copy of Montecorvino's letter. There are one or two slight circumstances in the chronicle which are not mentioned in that letter but they look very like such amplifications as would be natural in such a case.
John in the first of these letters makes interesting mention of a certain King George of the family of Prester John. • This George is mentioned by Marco Polo as exercising a secondary sovereignty in Tendue, the position of which has been explained in a note on Odoric (p. 146). Marco also names the same George as one of the generals of Kublai's army in a great battle with Kaidu, the Khan's inveterate rival.' This seems the most suit-
' Le Quien, iii, coll. 1346-1356. This see, as Prof. Kunstmann points out, is that of Cembalo in the Crimea (I presume the Symbolön Limèn of
Strabo), and now famous under the name of Balaklava.
2 In Eccard, Corpus Historicum, etc., i, coll. 1895-7. Winterthur is in
the modern Swiss canton Zurich.
3 Phillips and Görres, xliii, 677. 4 Marco Polo, ii, 50, iii, 44.
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