IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
320 MARIGNOLLI'S RECOLLECTIONS OF EASTERN TRAVEL.
Marignolli mentions incidentally that the party, during their stay at Cambalec, consisted of thirty-two persons, but with no further particulars. Nor do we even know what became of his colleagues in the legation. Though Marignolli's name comes only third in the Pope's letters, he speaks throughout his narrative as if he had been the chief, if not the sole, representative of the Pontiff. And it is him alone that Wadding mentions by name in his short notices of the proceedings and return of the mission.
One of the four indeed, Nicholas Boneti, must have returned speedily if he ever started for the East at all. For in May 1342 he is recorded to have been appointed by Clement VI to the Bishopric of Malta.'
Marignolli's notices of his travels have no proper claim to the title of a narrative, and indeed the construction of a narrative out of them is a task something like that of raising a geological theory out of piecemeal observations of strata and the study of scattered organic remains. It is necessary, therefore, to give a short sketch of the course of his travels, such as the editor has
a understood it, unless readers are to go through the same amount of trouble in putting the pieces together. But in doing so I shall anticipate as little as possible the details into which our author enters.
The party left Avignon in December 1338, but had to wait at Naples some time for the Tartar envoys, who had probably been lionizing in the cities and courts of Italy. Constantinople was
brought to the Catholic faith by the Minor Friars dwelling in that country for the purpose of preaching Christ's Gospel. And he sent ambassadors with a letter to Pope Benedict, to beg that he would deign to send teachers, preachers, and directors of the orthodox faith to convert the people, to baptize the converted, and to confirm the baptized in their new faith. And the Pope, joyfully assenting, arranged the despatch of fifty Minor Friars (because men of that order had been the instruments of the king's conversion), all men of good understanding and knowledge of life. But as to what progress they have made, or how much people they have won to the Lord Jesus Christ, up to this present time of Lent in the year 1343 no news whatever hath reached Suabia." (Joannis Vitodurani (of Winterthur) Chron. in Eccard, i., col. 1852.)
Wadding, An. 1.342, § iv. This annalist says of Nicholas, as if know-
ing all about his return, qui tarnen ob graves causas ex ipso reversus est itinere."
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