Giovanni da Montecorvino

John of Montecorvino, or Giovanni Da/di Montecorvino in Italian, also spelled Monte Corvino (1246, Montecorvino, Southern Italy - 1328, Peking), was a Franciscan missionary, traveller and statesman, founder of the earliest Roman Catholic missions in India and China, and archbishop of Peking.

As a member of a Roman Catholic religious order which at that time was chiefly concerned with the conversion of unbelievers, he was commissioned in 1272 by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to Pope Gregory X, to negotiate for the reunion of the 'Greek' (Orthodox) and Latin churches.

Commissioned by Pope Nicholas IV to preach Christianity in the Nearer and Middle East, especially to the Asiatic hordes then threatening the West, he devoted himself incessantly from 1275 to 1289 to the Eastern missions, first that of Persia. In 1286 Arghun, the Ilkhan who ruled this kingdom, sent a request to the pope through the Nestorian bishop, Bar Sauma, to send Catholic missionaries to the Court of the Great khan (Mongol emperor) of China, Kúblaí Khan (1260-94), who was well disposed towards Christianity. About that time John of Montecorvino came to Rome with similar promising news, and Pope Nicholas entrusted him with the important mission to Farther China, where about this time Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian lay traveller, still lingered.

In 1289 John revisited the Papal Court and was sent out as Roman legate to the Great Khan, the Ilkhan of Persia, and other leading personages of the Mongol world, as well as to the Emperor of Ethiopia. He started on his journey in 1289, provided with letters to the Khan Argun, to the great Emperor Kublai Khan, to Kaidu, Prince of the Tatars, to the King of Armenia and to the Patriarch of the Jacobites. His companions were the Dominican Nicholas of Pistoia and the merchant Peter of Lucalongo. He reached Tabriz (in Iranian Azerbeijan), then the chief city of Mongol Persia, if not of all Western Asia.

From Persia they moved down by sea to India, in 1291, to the Madras region or "Country of St. Thomas" where he preached for thirteen months and baptized about one hundred persons; his companion Nicholas died. From there Monte Corvino wrote home, in December 1291 (or 1292), the earliest noteworthy account of the Coromandel coast furnished by any Western European. Travelling by sea from Nestorian Meliapur in Bengal, he reached China in 1294, appearing in the capital "Cambaliech" (now Beijing), only to find that Kúblaí Khan had just died, and Temür(1294-1307) had succeeded to the Mongol throne. Though the latter did apparently not embrace Christianity, he threw no obstacles in the way of the zealous missionary, who soon won the confidence of the ruler in spite of the opposition of the Nestorians already settled there.

In 1299 John built a church at Khanbaliq and in 1305 a second opposite the imperial palace, together with workshops and dwellings for two hundred persons. He gradually bought from heathen parents about one hundred and fifty boys, from seven to eleven years of age, instructed them in Latin and Greek, wrote psalms and hymns for them and then trained them to serve Mass and sing in the choir. At the same time he familiarized himself with the native language, preached in it, and translated into Chinese the New Testament and the Psalms. Among the six thousand converts of John of Montecorvino was a Nestorian king named George, allegedly of the race of Prester John, a vassal of the great khan, mentioned by Marco Polo.

Giovanni wrote letters of January 8, 1305, and February 13, 1306, describing the progress of the Roman mission in the Far East, in spite of Nestorian opposition; alluding to the Roman Catholic community he had founded in India, and to an appeal he had received to preach in "Ethiopia" and dealing with overland and oversea routes to "Cathay," from the Black Sea and the Persian Gulf respectively.

After he had worked alone for eleven years, the German Franciscan Arnold of Cologne was sent to him (1304 or 1303) as his first colleague. In 1307 Pope Clement V, highly pleased with the missionary's success, sent seven Franciscan bishops who were commissioned to consecrate John of Montecorvino archbishop of Peking and summus archiepiscopus 'chief archbishop' of all those countries; they were themselves to be his suffragan bishops. Only three of these envoys arrived safely: Gerardus, Peregrinus and Andrew of Perugia (1308). They consecrated John in 1308 and succeeded each other in the episcopal see of Zaiton, established by Montecorvino. In 1312 three more Franciscans were sent out from Rome to act as suffragans, of whom one at least reached East Asia.

For the next 20 years the Chinese-Mongol mission continued to flourish under his leadership. A Franciscan tradition that about 1310 Monte Corvino converted the new Great Khan, also called Khaishan Kuluk (third of the Yuen dynasty; 1307-1311) is disputed. His mission unquestionably won remarkable successes in North and East China. Besides three mission stations in Peking, he established one near the present Amoy harbour, opposite Formosa island (Taiwan).

His discussions with Prince George, the leader of the Öngüt Turks, led the prince and many of his people to change their allegiance from the Syro-Oriental (Nestorian) Church to the Roman Catholic Church. John of Montecorvino translated the New testament into Uyghur and provided copies of the Psalms, the Breviary and liturgical hymns for the Öngüt. He was instrumental in teaching boys the Latin chant, probably for a choir in the liturgy and with the hope that some of them might become priests.

When John of Montecorvino died about AD 1328, heathen vied with Christian in honoring him as a saint (uncanonized). He was apparently the only effective European bishop in medieval Peking. Even after his death, the Mission in China endured for the next forty years.

Sources

• This article incorporates text from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article "John of Montecorvino" by Otto Hartig, a publication now in the public domain.
• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• The manuscripts of Monte Corvino's Letters exist in the Laurentian Library, Florence (for the Indian Epistle) and in the National Library, Paris, 5006 Lat.-viz. the Liber de aetatibus, fols. 170, v.-172, r. (for the Chinese). They are printed in Wadding, Annales minorum (A.D. 1305 and 1306) vi. 69-72, 91-92 (ed. of 1733, &c.), and in the Miinchner gelehrte Anzeigen (1855), No. 22, part in. pp. 171175. English translations, with valuable comments, are in Sir H. Yule's Cathay, i. 197-221.
• See also Wadding, Annales, v. 195-198, 199-203, ,vi. 93, &c., 147, &c., 176, &c., 467, &c.; C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 162-178, 206-210; Sir H. Yule, Cathay, i. 165-173. (C. R. B.)

See also

• Religion in China
• Medieval Roman Catholic Missions in China
• Christianity in China

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