Letter from Zayton
A letter home from a Franciscan bishop in southern China. Andrew of Perugia tells how he reached Khanbaliq, as he reckoned in 1308, where John of Montecorvino was consecrated archbishop, and how he later became bishop of Zayton.
Andrew writes from Zayton, a port on the coast of southern China, to the warden of the Franciscan house at Perugia. He was one of the bishops sent out by the Apostolic See, and says that he and one companion reached Khanbaliq after great hardship, that the archbishop was consecrated there as Rome had ordered, and that he lived for nearly five years on an allowance from the emperor.
He writes some eighteen years after the events and marks his own uncertainty about the year (“as well as I can reckon”). The letter is preserved, like those of John of Montecorvino, in Wadding’s annals of the Franciscan order. See Franciscan Envoys to the Mongols and the Church of Khanbaliq.
Cited in
- 1245 to 1307, firm date