Odorich von Portenau

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Odorich von Portenau
(illustration from 1881)

Odorich von Portenau (Italian Odorico da Pordenone , civil Odorico Mattiussi or Mattiuzzi , * between 1265 and 1286 in Villanova di Sotto , a district of Pordenone ; † January 14, 1331 in Udine ) was a Franciscan , who mainly because of his journey from Italy after China is recorded in history.

Life

Odorich's grave in Udine

Odorich's hometown, Pordenone , is located in today's Italian Friuli and belonged to the Babenbergers as a so-called free float for several hundred years . In the interregnum , ownership of the former village went to Ottokar II , King of Bohemia , in 1276 as an enclave to the Habsburgs and in 1508 to Venice . Because of his place of birth, Odorich is sometimes considered Austria's first world traveler.

Odorich was of Bohemian descent. The year of birth of Odorich is not known, but it is between 1265 and 1286 and would therefore fall during the time of the interregnum or the reign of Ottokar II, or only a short time afterwards. After Odoric lived the life of a hermit in Pordenone , he joined the Franciscans in Udine around 1300 . Between 1314 and 1318 he set out on his trip to Asia, which lasted at least 12 years. He came via Turkey , India , Sumatra , Java and Borneo to Beijing , where a Franciscan mission already existed at that time. After a stay of three years, he returned to Europe via the Silk Road . In the winter of 1330/1331 he dictated to a friar the wondrous stories from the Tatar empire that I saw with my own eyes in the lands where I had been .

In the winter of 1331 Odorich intended to make his way to the Pope in Avignon in order to receive permission or the blessing for another mission in China. However, he died earlier, on January 14, 1331 in Udine, Italy. Pope John XXII. said Odorich von Portenau beatified in 1755 .

The travel report from Asia

Catholic Chinese image depicting Blessed Odoric
Blessed Odoric's life

A Franciscan Friar Minor from Prague wrote a revision of the travelogue ten years after Odorico's death. Around 100 copies of the report are still available in Latin today; a critical edition is missing. In 1359 the Viennese diocesan priest Konrad Steckel completed a German translation, which is now available in four handwritten copies, followed by Italian and French translations, but it was only in the recent modern era that the Franciscan received broader academic attention.

Odorich's journey (approx. 1318-1330) belongs thematically to the field of diplomatic-missionary trips to Asia like the similar ventures Carpinis (1245-1247), Rubruks (1252-1255) and Marco Polos (1271-1295), the papal side after Mongol invasion of Western Europe in 1241 was initiated.

Content of the report

Even at the beginning of the travelogue one recognizes the medieval character of the text, which tells the modern reader no chronological travel information, but mirabilia, miraculous anecdotes. At first he reports of "partridges that are led through the air".

The first chapter reports from the northern Turkish port city of Trapezunt (today: Trabzon ) on the Black Sea . He tells of a mountain in eastern Turkey on which he suspected Noah's Ark (probably Ararat ). Odorich wanted to climb the mountain, but gave up when he was warned by the people about possible blasphemy. The journey took him on to Tabriz in Iran , which he called “the most suitable trading city in the world”, “because the whole world trades with that city”.

Odorich von Portenau wandered with caravans through "the Saracen country " ( Persia ) in the direction of the port city of Hormuz , which lies on a peninsula at the entrance to the Persian Gulf . During his stay in Persia, he visited some important cities at the time, such as Cassam , today's Kashan between Tehran and Isfahan . Odorico believed, like Marco Polo , that Cassam was the city from which the Three Kings came. He reports among other things. from the “Reiche Chaldäa ”, an area that roughly referred to southern Mesopotamia as far as Baghdad upstream, “where women only wear undergarments and trousers and the genitals of men hang down to their calves because of the great heat”. This observation may be elephantiasis , a disease unknown in the European Middle Ages and widespread in subtropical areas. Limbs and, in rare cases, the genital organs are unusually swollen due to lymphatic congestion.

As Odorico after a long voyage in Thana , near the present-day Bombay went ashore, he found four brothers who by execution the martyrdom suffered. His account goes into great detail about the strange details of her death, and Odorich decided to bury the remains of the confreres in the earth of the Franciscan Mission in China.

The further voyage took him along the Indian south coast to Sri Lanka , then to the east coast of India , he stayed on the Nicobar Islands in the Andaman Sea , reported about the cannibalism of the “dog-headed population”, and crossed almost 200 years before Vasco da Gama twice the equator .

With ships "which were put together only with pitch and without iron parts", he came to Sumatra and Java , for example in the area of ​​Batavia ( Jakarta ). He wandered on foot through the now-vanished Kingdom of Champa (today: Cambodia and Vietnam ) to finally reach the court of the Mongolian Great Khan in what is now Beijing , through southern China, still known as "Upper India" in the Middle Ages , where other spiritual representatives, also of Islam , together with the Franciscans, were allowed to take part in the courtly ceremony.

After a few years in Cathay (China), he started his return journey, which took him first north along the Silk Road to Inner Mongolia , then west to the edge of Tibet and probably back to Padua via Afghanistan and Persia , where he arrived in 1330.

Odorico's report vividly tells of "oxen that are worshiped as god", widow burnings in India, cannibalism, pepper cultivation in Indonesia , sexual debauchery in Champa, cormorant fishing in South China, Buddhist reincarnation theories and the Mongolian court ceremony in Beijing. The reader learns of the up to the present practice in Tibet burial methods by vultures and the legendary " Old Man of the Mountain ", which is said that he had in his garden Assassin ( Assassin held), was later but by the Tartars ousted .

Catalog raisonné

  • Itinerarium Fratris Odorici de Foro Julii , Ordinis Fratrum Minorum, de mirabilibus Orientalium Tartarum, Ms. 1330, editing of the report: Guillelmus de Solagna, 1330, Heinrich v. Glatz, 1331
    • 1st printed edition: Odoricus de Rebus incognitis, 1513
    • Külb, Die Reisen der Missionare I, 3, 1860, 103-165
    • H. Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, 1866, I, 1-162; 2a 1913, t. II, 97-277 (English), 278-336 (Latin), 337-367 (Italian)
  • Relatio Fratri Odorico, ed. by A. van den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana I, Firenze 1929, 413-495 (copy of the old manuscript A = Assisi)
  • Relazione del viaggio in Oriente e in Cina (1314? -1330), 1982
    • The journey of the blessed Odorico from Portenau to India and China (1314 / 18-1330), transl., Incl. u. ext. Folker Reichert, 1987.

literature

  • 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
  • L. Monaco et al. ( Eds .): Odorichus, De rebus incognitis. Odorico de Pordenone nella prima edizione a stampa del 1513 , Pordenone 1986
  • G. Strasmann: Konrad Steckel's German translation of Odorico de Pordenone's 'Reise nach China' , 1968
  • Andrea Tilatti:  Odorico da Pordenone. In: Raffaele Romanelli (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 79:  Nursio – Ottolini Visconti. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2013, p. 164, full text online only.
  • Q. Wood: Did Marco Polo Go to China? , 1998.
  • E. Feigl: Oderich von Portenau (1286-1331) The first European to reach Tibet. In: As Austria named the world (Schlosshof 1996) 31–41
  • Henze, Enzyklopädie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde 16 Lfg (Graz 1993) 733–801
  • F. Reichert: Reality and Perception in the Itinerar Odoricos da Pordenone. In: Überseegeschichte 75 (Stuttgart 1999) 42–55

Web links

Commons : Odorico da Pordenone  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ for the numerous name variants see the catalog of the German National Library
  2. ↑ Pand, Michael , Odorico von Portenau - The First Austrian World Traveler , media booklet for the video, publication by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Art and Culture (BMUKK), 2001, p. 2. (PDF file; 35 kB)
  3. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913
  4. ^ Pand, Michael , p. 3.
personal data
SURNAME Odorich von Portenau
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Odoricus de Portu Naonis (real name); Odorico da Pordenone
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franciscan who walked from Pordenone to Beijing
DATE OF BIRTH between 1265 and 1286
PLACE OF BIRTH Villanova di Sotto near Pordenone
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1331
Place of death Udine