the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
Jordanus
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or (JORDAN CATALANI) (fl. 1321-1330), French Dominican missionary and explorer in Asia, was perhaps born at Severac in Aveyron, north-east of Toulouse. In 1302 he may have accompanied the famous Thomas of Tolentino, via Negropont, to the East; but it is only in 1321 that we definitely discover him in western India, in the company of the same Thomas and certain other Franciscan missionaries on their way to China. Ill-luck detained them at Tana in Salsette island, near Bombay; and here Jordanus' companions ("the four martyrs of Tana") fell victims to Moslem fanaticism (April 7, 1321). Jordanus, escaping, worked some time at Baruch in Gujarat, near the Nerbudda estuary, and at Suali (?) near Surat; to his fellow-Dominicans in north Persia he wrote two letters - the first from Gogo in Gujarat (October 12, 1321), the second from Tana (January 24, 1323/4) - describing the progress of this new mission. From these letters we learn that Roman attention had already been directed, not only to the Bombay region, but also to the extreme south of the Indian peninsula, especially to "Columbum," Quilon, or Kulam in Travancore; Jordanus' words may imply that he had already started a mission there before October 1321. From Catholic traders he had learnt that Ethiopia (i.e. Abyssinia and Nubia) was accessible to Western Europeans; at this very time, as we know from other sources, the earliest Latin missionaries penetrated thither. Finally, the Epistles of Jordanus, like the contemporary Secreta of Marino Sanuto (1306-1321), urge the pope to establish a Christian fleet upon the Indian seas. Jordanus, between 1324 and 1328 (if not earlier), probably visited Kulam and selected it as the best centre for his future work; it would also appear that he revisited Europe about 1328, passing through Persia, and perhaps touching at the great Crimean port of Soldaia or Sudak. He was appointed a bishop in 1328 and nominated by Pope John XXII. to the see of Columbum in 1330. Together with the new bishop of Samarkand, Thomas of Mancasola, Jordanus was commissioned to take the pall to John de Cora, archbishop of Sultaniyah in Persia, within whose province Kulam was reckoned; he was also commended to the Christians of south India, both east and west of Cape Comorin, by Pope John. Either before going out to Malabar as bishop, or during a later visit to the west, Jordanus probably wrote his Mirabilia, which from internal evidence can only be fixed within the period 1329-1338; in this work he furnished the best account of Indian regions, products, climate, manners, customs, fauna and flora given by any European in the Middle Ages - superior even to Marco Polo's. In his triple division of the Indies, India Major comprises the shorelands from Malabar to Cochin China; while India Minor stretches from Sind (or perhaps from Baluchistan) to Malabar; and India Tertia (evidently dominated by African conceptions in his mind) includes a vast undefined coast-region west of Baluchistan, reaching into the neighbourhood of, but not including, Ethiopia and Prester John's domain. Jordanus' Mirabilia contains the earliest clear African identification of Prester John, and what is perhaps the first notice of the Black Sea under that name; it refers to the author's residence in India Major and especially at Kulam, as well as to his travels in Armenia, north-west Persia, the Lake Van region, and Chaldaea; and it supplies excellent descriptions of Parsee doctrines and burial customs, of Hindu ox-worship, idol-ritual, and suttee, and of Indian fruits, birds, animals and insects. After the 8th of April 1330 we have no more knowledge of Bishop Jordanus.
Of Jordanus' Epistles there is only one MS., viz. Paris, National Library, 5006 Lat., fol. 182, r. and v.; of the Mirabilia also one MS. only, viz. London, British Museum, Additional MSS., 19,513, fols. 3, r. -12 r. The text of the Epistles is in Quetif and Echard, Scriptones ordinis praedicatorum, i. 549-550 (Epistle I.); and in Wadding, Annales minorum, vi. 359-361 (Epistle II.); the text of the Mirabilia in the Paris Geog. Soc.'s Recueil de voyages, iv. 1 -68 (1839). The Papal letters referring to Jordanus are in Raynaldus, Annales ecclesiastici, 1330, §§ lv. and lvii (April 8; Feb. 14). See also Sir H. Yule's Jordanus, a version of the Mirabilia with a commentary (Hakluyt Soc., 1863) and the same editor's Cathay, giving a version of the Epistles, with a commentary, &c. (Hak. Soc., 1866) pp. 184-185, 192-196, 225-230; F. Kunstmann, "Die Mission in Meliapor and Tana" and "Die Mission in Columbo" in the Historisch-politische Blotter of Phillips and Gorres, xxxvii. 25-38, 135-152 (Munich, 1856), &c.; C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 215 -235.
(C. R. B.)
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Jordanus'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/j/jordanus.html. 1910.
