126 chapter three
this commerce is rather indirect, mostly provided by men who themselves
had nothing to do with the world of trade, but who accompanied the
merchants to the ends of the known world at the time: franciscan and
dominican missionaries.
in 1314 odoric of pordenone made a new start in the fourteenth century,291
and was followed by four other franciscans, three of whom were martyred
at tana in india in 1321. only Jordan of severac survived, and was destined
for a long and successful missionary career. in 1329 he was elevated to
be bishop of Kulam, a large port on the malabar coast with a franciscan
monastery, which saw high volumes of spices shipped and was famous as
a centre of the pepper trade. speaking of the tragic events of 1321, the prel-
ate remembers that “many latin merchants came” to witness the friars’
martyrdom. one of these, Jacopo of genoa, sent a written report to the
bishop of tabriz. he learned of the sea route from india to ethiopia from
these same travellers.292
merchants who felt the urge to travel even further preferred to go east,
to where the riches of china awaited. the famous port city of ‘Zayton’
[= Quanzhou] seems to have been the favoured long-distance destination
for merchants not intending to travel within the empire. Just as in Kulam
in india, here too there was a relatively well-established community of
“latin” merchants with their own fondaco for lodgings, with baths. they
established three “very beautiful and rich” churches for the care of souls,
served by franciscan friars. Unlike the bishop of Kulam, the bishop here
not only had freedom to preach and to convert, but was also paid a sal-
ary by the great Khan. in a letter of 1326 the first to hold the see, andrew
of perugia, confirms that the genoese were the most important group of
Western merchants in Zayton (as might be expected from their domi-
nance in all regions beyond the levant) although they were not the only
group, even if bishop andrew mentions no others.293
several scattered documents consistently show that the ligurians were
the most active of the Western merchants on the coast of india and in
china. one example is that of Jacopo di oliverio, trafegando et mercando
for some ten years from 1330 in Beijing, who multiplied five-fold his initial
291 he dictated an account of his voyage to china in 1330, after returning to his home-
land, published in Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana, i, pp. 413–495, and Yule, Cathay, i,
pp. 1–162.
292 golubovich, Biblioteca, ii, p. 71, richard, “navigations,” pp. 356–357.
293 cf. heyd, Histoire, ii, p. 220 (on pp. 247 ff. heyd lists the Western mercantile and
ecclesiastical presence in the chinese interior), lopez, “luci,” pp. 452–453, petech, “march-
ands,” pp. 553–554.