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Collaboration between European Merchants and Franciscan Friars in Mongol-Yuan China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2026

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WENDAN LI*
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Abstract

Collaboration between European merchants and Franciscan friars in Mongol-Yuan China is often discussed without sufficient attention to local contexts. Drawing on Latin and Chinese sources, this study shows how friars and merchants pragmatically adapted European practices to East Asia. It examines their co-location of churches and trading houses in Khanbaliq and Zayton, as well as their joint involvement in diplomatic missions to the Great Khan. The analysis situates these interactions within the local culture of religious-commercial symbiosis, the broader framework of tributary diplomacy and the ortoq merchant system under Mongol rule.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , First View , pp. 1 - 23
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press

The parallel expansion of trade and religious networks and close collaboration between itinerant merchants and friars were common phenomena in the premodern world.Footnote 1 The Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century opened overland routes linking Asia and Europe, along which mendicant friars and European merchants travelled eastward.Footnote 2 While scholars have examined the Europeans who came eastward in detail, the interactive and mutually beneficial relations between friars and merchants remain insufficiently clarified.

This paper examines one such partnership in Mongol-Yuan China, where Franciscan missionaries and Italian merchants visited and settled during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The relatively rich literary traditions of both Latin missionary texts and Chinese sources allow for a close reading of the friars’ narratives against their local context. A central methodological challenge, however, lies in the rarity of cases that admit cross-referencing between these two corpora. The Latin corpus consists primarily of letters sent by friars from Mongol-Yuan China, accounts of their journeys and Franciscan historiographical works that incorporate or reshape these reports.Footnote 3 The Chinese records, by contrast, fall largely into two categories: administrative documents – including privileges granted to religious communities and regulations governing merchant activityFootnote 4 – and official histories and literati miscellanies, which refer to diplomatic missions from Europe, often highlighting exotic objects, local customs and tributary exchanges.Footnote 5 Given the fragmentary and uneven nature of the evidence, some interpretations in this study necessarily remain tentative. Nevertheless, by bringing these disparate sources into dialogue, this article offers a more nuanced understanding of friar-merchant collaboration than either corpus can provide on its own. It argues that this collaboration was rooted in religious ethics and commercial practices developed in medieval Europe and it clarifies how this partnership functioned in Mongol-Yuan China and why it is only obliquely reflected, or largely absent, in contemporary accounts from both cultural traditions.

Religious ethics and commercial practices across medieval Eurasia

Mendicant orders arose in early thirteenth-century Europe against a backdrop of urban expansion, rapid commercial development and worsening social inequality.Footnote 6 Francis of Assisi (c. 1181–1226), the son of a merchant, saw the boundless desire for property as the root of social conflicts.Footnote 7 The Franciscans therefore built their identity around renunciation of personal property and permanent dwellings, embracing voluntary poverty as a means of restoring justice and dignity to the poor.Footnote 8

At first glance, the Franciscan rejection of wealth seemed to conflict with the profit-seeking nature of merchants. However, while condemning greed and hoarding, Franciscan intellectuals praised the generosity, compassion and responsibility of merchants, proposing a commercial ethic that served both social welfare and the salvation of souls. This framework offered merchants a moral justification for the pursuit of profits.Footnote 9 According to the Franciscan view, merchants were specialists in currency and trade, possessing tireless dedication and adventurous habits, and facilitating the circulation of wealth that benefited Christian society as a whole.Footnote 10 Among medieval religious authorities, the Franciscans were the most accepting of commercial practices.Footnote 11

European merchants and mendicant friars gradually forged alliances.Footnote 12 Franciscan convents were often established near commercial districts in cities; merchants provided the friars with funds and necessities, and in return received moral and spiritual guidance, as well as social prestige in the form of ‘symbolic capital’.Footnote 13 Giacomo Todeschini has argued that mercantile support of Franciscan houses and adherence to Franciscan spiritual counsel was not simply a matter of easing troubled consciences, but rather the result of Franciscan virtues aligning with principles for achieving long-term efficiency and wealth.Footnote 14

This bond was particularly strong in medieval long-distance trade, which was both profitable and perilous. From the mid-thirteenth century on, the Franciscans and Dominicans, itinerant preachers by nature, were commissioned by popes to travel as far as Mongol-Yuan China, where they established dioceses and vicariates.Footnote 15 Beginning in the 1260s, as Mongol expansion halted and the empire consolidated its rule across Central and Eastern Asia, increasing numbers of European merchants began making their way into Mongol territory.Footnote 16 It is no coincidence that the merchants engaged in transcontinental trade – whether overland or maritime – maintained particularly close relationships with the friars. A well-known example from Europe is the Florentine merchant-banking family, the Bardi, whose patronage of the Franciscan Church of Santa Croce – including the commissioning of Giotto to paint the Life of St Francis fresco cycle – served as a powerful public expression of this merchant-friar alliance.Footnote 17 Bardi’s interest in the Mongol empire is evidenced by Pratica della mercatura , a commercial handbook for trade with the East authored by Francesco Balducci Pegolotti (fl. 1290–1347), who served the Compagnia dei Bardi between 1315 and 1335.Footnote 18 As Thomas Tanase has suggested, the activities of Florentine missionaries across Eurasia appear to have developed in tandem with the rise of Florence’s commercial prominence, as goods and information from the East flowed continuously into the city.Footnote 19 Beyond Marco Polo’s Description of the world , however, European merchants left almost no accounts of their activities in the Mongol empire. Their relationship with the friars in this distant region, one that must be reconstructed largely from the friars’ writings, therefore remains obscure.

Two main approaches have been taken in the literature to explain the interaction between merchants and friars in this context. The first approach synthesises scattered instances of contact, emphasising its fundamentally cooperative character. Robert S. Lopez has observed that commercial expansion and religious propaganda advanced eastward hand-in-hand.Footnote 20 Felicitas Schmieder has suggested that, in the Mongol empire, European missionaries tended to settle within the commercial communities of their compatriots, upon whom they relied for support.Footnote 21 William D. Phillips Jr. has argued that European merchants and missionaries employed similar strategies to engage with foreign societies in Asia.Footnote 22 Andrea Tilatti has noted that the pope asked merchants to provide the papal mission with ‘aid and counsel’ as well as logistical and economic support.Footnote 23 Roman Hautala’s work, focused on the Golden Horde, demonstrates that financial support from Italian merchants was crucial to mendicant activities, while the favour of the Mongol khans toward these merchants was partly a result of papal influence. In light of this, it is no coincidence that Franciscans appeared in Golden Horde territory at roughly the same time that the Genoese established trading posts in Caffa.Footnote 24

The second approach shifts the focus from practice to ideology, examining the theological framework that shaped Franciscan engagement with merchants. Julia McClure has rightly characterised the Franciscan envoys’ adherence to holy poverty as the ‘globalisation of Franciscan poverty’, arguing that ‘Franciscan history shows that the quest for an idealised spiritual value of poverty created new global connections and an attempt to create a new world order underpinned by these values in the late medieval and early modern period.’Footnote 25 She has challenged the standard ‘symbiotic’ model, according to which friars and merchants functioned as mutually beneficial partners, by proposing instead that Franciscan religious networks engaged in dialectical relationships with trade networks in the context of globalisation.Footnote 26 This article proposes an alternative reading of the apparent silence surrounding friar-merchant collaboration in the Mongol empire, providing a more nuanced interpretation of the sources by situating them within their local historical context.

Following the example of St Francis, Franciscans travelled as envoys and missionaries to the Mongol empire from the mid-thirteenth century onwards. During the Fifth Crusade (1217–21), Francis crossed to Damietta in Egypt, seeking to convert the Ayyubid Sultan al‑Malik al‑Kāmil (r. 1218–38) through persuasion rather than violence.Footnote 27 Francis arrived penniless and upheld his commitment to the value of holy poverty in the sultan’s presence. In the official Franciscan hagiography, Thomas of Celano (c. 1185–c. 1265) describes how the sultan attempted to tempt Francis with lavish gifts. Francis, however, resolutely scorned these worldly riches, comparing them to dung. The sultan was so impressed that he willingly listened to Francis.Footnote 28 This encounter shaped not only the self-understanding of friars travelling to distant regions, but also the Franciscans’ literary conventions. Several aspects of this narrative proved particularly formative: the missionary’s renunciation of material and institutional support; the overriding goal of converting non-Christians, even at the risk of martyrdom; and the moral authority derived from the strict observance of poverty.

It is important to note that most surviving accounts of Franciscan activity in the Mongol empire were either written in Europe or sent back there and are preserved primarily in fourteenth-century Franciscan historiography. These include, among others, the Chronicle of Fra Elemosina, the Chronicle of the twenty-four generals of the Order of Friars Minor and the travel accounts of Odoric of Pordenone (c. 1280–1331) and John of Marignolli (c. 1290–1359), which in some respects follow narrative patterns familiar from Marco Polo’s Description of the world. Footnote 29 These texts were produced at a time when the Franciscan order was undergoing a profound crisis of identity, marked by internal divisions and external criticism concerning the interpretation and practice of the ideal of poverty.Footnote 30 This context shaped how the Mongol missions were recorded and remembered; they were largely presented as a direct continuation of the spiritual legacy of St Francis and a reaffirmation of the order’s foundational ideals, emphasising poverty and self-sacrifice, even to the point of martyrdom, while avoiding anything that seemed to deviate from the Franciscan rule and example.Footnote 31 It is therefore not surprising that merchants appear only at the margins of these sources, consistently cast in roles auxiliary to those of the friars.

Finally, the relative silence of the Franciscans regarding their symbiotic relations with merchants should not be taken as evidence that such relations did not exist; it may instead reflect pragmatic considerations. As one friar in Caffa confessed after receiving food and clothing from local benefactors: ‘We have almost kept silent this, with conscience pressing us, lest perhaps any slight relief and lightness of suffering should attract some of the weak.’Footnote 32 This same attitude may well have shaped the way friars presented their interactions with merchants more generally. The support that European merchants offered to the friars may have exceeded what Franciscan sources were prepared to disclose.

Chinese sources, likewise, must be interpreted within their own political and cultural frameworks. Given their heterogeneous nature, each source is examined critically on its own terms when cited. The following sections explore collaboration between European merchants and friars in Mongol-Yuan China and the practical realities they encountered. While the analysis focuses primarily on the Yuan dynasty, owing to the relative abundance of available documentation, its findings may have broader implications for the Mongol empire as a whole. Comparable cases from other khanates are incorporated where relevant.

The coexistence of churches and commercial houses

The Franciscan friar John of Montecorvino (c. 1247–1328), later the first archbishop of Khanbaliq (also known as Dadu, today’s Beijing), was dispatched to the East by Pope Nicholas iv (r. 1288–92) in 1289, and reached Khanbaliq in 1293 or 1294.Footnote 33 In a letter written in 1306 to fellow mendicants in Persia, John described a donation from the Italian merchant Peter of Lucalongo, who travelled with him from Tauris (today’s Tabriz) to China:

In this year of our Lord 1305, I began another new site in front of the gate of the Lord Chaan, and between his court and our place there is only one road, distant by a stone’s throw from the gate of the Lord Chaan. Lord Peter of Lucalongo, a faithful Christian and a great merchant, who was my companion from Tauris, bought the land for the place of which I have spoken and gave it to me for the love of God and by the working of divine grace, because a more useful and suitable place could not be found in the whole empire of the Lord Chaan for building a Catholic church. I received the site at the beginning of August, and with benefactors assisting and helping, it was completed by the feast of St Francis, with a wall around it and flat-roofed houses, workrooms and an oratory that held 200 people … The Lord Chaan can hear our voices (singing) in his chamber.Footnote 34

Drawing on archaeological evidence from Khanbaliq and relevant historical records – most notably the Gazetteer of Xijin, compiled by Xiong Mengxiang in the late Yuan dynasty, which provides a detailed account of the city’s layout, institutions, infrastructure and society – the site of the church donated by Peter of Lucalongo to John of Montecorvino has been tentatively identified.Footnote 35 The archaeologist Xu Pingfang proposed that it lay just outside the Houzai Red Gate, the northern gate of the Yuan Imperial City (slightly south of today’s Di’an Gate).Footnote 36 The archaeologist Lin Meicun further argued that the open space between this gate and the Wanning bridge on the Tonghui canal was used to store goods transported along the Grand Canal. To the east of the Houzai Red Gate stood the imperial Fengyu granary, known as the ‘East Warehouse’, while the open space to the west of the gate, extending to Xuanwu Lake (today’s Houhai), was the Yuan-period ‘West Warehouse’. Unlike the imperial ‘East Warehouse’, the ‘West Warehouse’ stored grain and other goods brought from the Tonghui Canal and was available for private use. John of Montecorvino’s church was most likely located in an open area near the ‘West Warehouse’ (see Figure 1).Footnote 37

Figure 1

Map of Khanbaliq, adapted from G. Chen, The capital of the Yuan dynasty, trans. P. Poon, Honolulu 2015, 68, with revisions and annotations by this author. © 2015 Enrich Professional Publishing, Inc; reproduced and adapted by permission.

Key: 1. West Warehouse for private use; 2. East Warehouse for imperial use; 3. Church of John of Montecorvino; 4. Houzai Red Gate (northern gate of Yuan imperial palace); 5. Imperial palace; 6. Lake Jishuitan; 7. Tonghui canal; 8. Market district; 9. Bell tower.

A detailed historical city plan of Khanbaliq showing a grid layout with a central imperial palace complex and numbered landmarks. See long description.
Figure 1 Long description

A rectangular city plan oriented with North at the top. The city is enclosed by a thick outer wall with multiple gates including Jiande Gate and Anzhen Gate to the North, and Lizheng Gate to the South. A grid of streets and residential blocks called fang divides the city.

At the South-Central core is the Imperial Palace, a large rectangular walled enclosure containing the Imperial Garden, Houzai Gate, and various halls such as Daming Hall and Yabchun Gate. To the West of the palace is Taiye Lake containing Qionghua Islet.

Numbered red annotations identify key sites:

* 9. Bell Tower is located in the North-Central district.

* 8. Market district is situated just South of the Bell Tower.

* 6. Lake Jishuitan Haizi is a large irregular water body in the Northwest quadrant.

* 7. Tonghui canal connects to the lake.

* 4. Houzai Red Gate is the northern entrance to the imperial palace.

* 1. West Warehouse for private use and 2. East Warehouse for imperial use are located just North of the palace gate.

* 3. Church of John of Montecorvino is positioned near the warehouses.

* 5. Imperial palace occupies the central southern area.

Other notable features include the Altar of Land and Grain to the West, the Temple of Confucius Imperial Academy to the Northeast, and various administrative bureaus like the Censorate and Secretariat in the South.

John of Montecorvino praised the church’s location as ideal because of its proximity to the Great Khan’s own chamber, which allowed the Great Khan to hear friars singing at any time. For Peter of Lucalongo, this location was strategic for different reasons. The land he purchased lay at the junction of Lake Jishuitan (Reservoir Lake) and the Tonghui Canal, then the principal water transportation hub of Khanbaliq.Footnote 38 This location not only served as the convergence point for goods arriving from across China, but also enabled merchants to transport cargo southward along the Grand Canal and from ports such as Yangzhou and Hangzhou toward the maritime routes of the Silk Road, as they are now called. Moreover, this area was in proximity to Khanbaliq’s most prosperous marketplace, located north of the imperial palace at the junction of Lake Jishuitan and Bell Tower West Street, a vibrant commercial centre for trade in silk, furs, pearls and other commodities.Footnote 39 Marco Polo, who sojourned in Khanbaliq in the late thirteenth century, described the thriving commerce of the city:

To this city (i.e. Khanbaliq) come more precious things of greater value and in greater quantities than to any city in the world, and more merchandise is bought and sold here. For know truly that every day more than a thousand cartloads of silk enter this city, for many cloths of gold and silk are worked there.Footnote 40

It is plausible that Peter of Lucalongo maintained a warehouse or fondaco in the same vicinity as John of Montecorvino’s church, given that he had travelled with John from Tabriz to Khanbaliq and remained there, or repeatedly returned, over a period of twelve years.Footnote 41 If this reconstruction is correct, their establishments may have formed a focal point of the European community in Khanbaliq. A parallel case can be found in Tana, in the Golden Horde, where Venetian merchants were granted the land behind the hospital church, extending to the shore of the River Tenis, to build houses for conducting their trade.Footnote 42

A close association between churches and commercial houses is attested with clearer evidence in the port city of Zayton (today’s Quanzhou), the episcopal see of the Khanbaliq archdiocese.Footnote 43 Andrew of Perugia, bishop of Zayton, testifies to the presence of Genoese merchants in the city and their contact with the friars.Footnote 44 The papal envoy John of Marignolli, who remained in China from 1342 to 1346/7, notes that ‘Zayton is a seaport and marvellous city, incredible to us, where the Friars Minor have three most beautiful, finest and very richly endowed churches, a bathhouse, a fondaco [merchant’s inn and trading centre] and a warehouse for all merchants.’Footnote 45

The Franciscan-run bathhouse, fondaco and warehouse in Zayton appear exceptional when compared with normal European Franciscan practice. This uniqueness may have been closely related to the extensive privileges that Franciscans enjoyed during the Mongol-Yuan dynasty. Surviving imperial edicts demonstrate that officially recognised religious personnel, including Christian clergy, were granted broad exemptions.Footnote 46 Such edicts were typically inscribed on stone stelae erected in the courtyards or before the gates of religious institutions and have survived, together with those institutions.Footnote 47 Consequently, a considerable number of stone-inscribed privileges pertaining to Buddhist and Daoist establishments remain extant, whereas those issued to Christian communities have not survived, though Christians are attested as recipients of comparable grants. One illustrative example is the 1341 imperial edict issued by the Great Khan Toghon Temür (r. 1333–68) for the Daoist Chongyang Wanshou Palace in Zhouzhi:Footnote 48

Imperial edict by the Mandate of Eternal Heaven and with great blessing and divine protection:

To all military officers, soldiers, darughachi [overseers] of the cities, officials, travelling envoys, this imperial edict is proclaimed:

In the imperial edicts of Genghis Khan, Ögedei Khan, Kublai Khan, Öljeyitü Khan, Külüg Khan, Buyantu Khan, Gegeen Khan, Khutughtu Khan, and Irenchenppan Khan, it was declared: ‘Buddhist Monks, yelikewen [Christian clergy], Daoist masters, and dānishmand [Islamic religious leaders], whatever levies or service obligations there may be, let them be exempted, so they shall pray to Heaven for Our longevity.’

Now, in accordance with the precedent of these imperial edicts, whatever levies or service obligations there may be, let them be exempted, so they shall pray to Heaven for Our longevity …

No envoy shall lodge in their temples or dwellings. None shall demand post-horses or provisions from them. They shall be exempt from land and commercial taxes. All properties belonging to their temples – farmlands, lands and waters, gardens, mills, boats, bamboo groves, pawnshops, inns, market stalls, bathhouses, vinegar breweries and the like – shall bear no tax or levy whatsoever. No one, regardless of status, shall forcibly seize and demand them. Moreover, whatever money and goods are obtained each year, they shall be managed by the Daoist masters themselves. If temple buildings fall into disrepair, they shall use these funds for restoration. Furthermore, no one shall interfere with or disrupt their affairs …

Imperial edict.

Written in Shangdu in the sixth month of the first year of Zhizheng, the year of the snake.

This imperial edict followed a tradition established by Genghis Khan, which not only continued to exempt personnel of religious institutions from taxes and corvée labour, but also extended protection to all properties and assets of monasteries and temples, including commercial houses, market stalls and bathhouses, shielding them from taxation and levies and prohibiting interference by either officials or private individuals. In this edict, the term yelikewen should be understood as referring to Christian clergy in general, and not exclusively to the clergy of the East Syriac Church. This interpretation is supported on two grounds. First, when granting privileges, Mongol rulers rarely distinguished between different sects of the same religion. For instance, no distinction was made between Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism. Second, the Franciscans in Mongol-Yuan China served as officially recognised clergy: John of Montecorvino held a seat at the Great Khan’s court and was honoured ‘above the other prelates’ by the Great Khan,Footnote 49 while Andrew of Perugia, bishop of Zayton, records that they received alafa , stipends granted by the Great Khan for the maintenance of envoys, monks and other religious personnel.Footnote 50 Several Franciscan legates and missionaries, including Odoric of Pordenone and John of Marignolli, were invited to participate in prayer activities in the Mongol court.Footnote 51 Therefore, there is little doubt that the Franciscans in Mongol-Yuan China belonged to the category of those who ‘shall pray to Heaven’ and enjoyed the protection conferred by such privileges.

Imperial edicts of exemption and protection issued throughout Mongol-Yuan China follow a fixed formula and have very similar contents. From the city of Khanbaliq discussed above, imperial edicts granted to the Daoist Fushou Xingyuan Abbey (1316) and the Buddhist Chongguo Temple (1354) have been preserved, and both contain comparable provisions.Footnote 52 This practice was not confined to Mongol-Yuan China but is similarly attested in other Mongol khanates. The only extant edict granted explicitly to the Franciscans was issued by Özbeg Khan (r. 1313–41) of the Golden Horde on 20 March 1314. It protected the friars from the seizure of goods, transport requisitions, tribute, taxation and any interference with their property, as well as from violence or oppression, including the destruction of their churches, houses or places.Footnote 53 In both protocol and substance, Özbeg Khan’s 1314 edict – albeit in a more concise form – closely resembles the edicts issued by the Great Khans, suggesting a consistent religious policy across the Mongol realms. Within this institutional framework, the activities of the Franciscans in Zayton become more intelligible. John of Marignolli notes that they operated a bathhouse, fondaco and warehouse, corresponding to the profit-making properties listed in the imperial edict, such as inns, market stalls and bathhouses.Footnote 54 These facilities, combining lodging, storage and commercial functions, served as gathering places for Europeans in Zayton and potential revenue sources, benefiting both merchants and friars.

In Mongol-Yuan China, collaboration between Franciscans and merchants likely drew on broader patterns of religious-commercial symbiosis. The 1322 printed legal compendium Yuan dianzhang [Statutes and precedents of the sacred administration of the Great Yuan dynastic state] contains several judicial decisions addressing the widespread tax evasion of merchants operating under the protection of religious institutions.Footnote 55 For instance, the chapter on ‘maritime trade’ ( shibo ) records a resolution of 1293 addressing the abuse of tax privileges by religious personnel:

Buddhist monks, Daoist masters, Christian clergy and Islamic religious leaders often bring laypeople engaged in overseas trade under their protection to evade customs dues. It was resolved that, henceforth, unless they hold an explicit decree of exemption, the Maritime Trade Offices shall levy taxes according to regulation; violators shall be punished as for contraband.Footnote 56

The chapter on ‘tax exemption’ ( mianshui ) records that in 1295 the Great Khan reaffirmed this with an imperial edict requiring the registration and taxation of inns and warehouses operated by religious figures:

Buddhist monks, Christian clergy, Daoist masters, and Islamic religious leaders are themselves exempt from duties, but they must not conceal goods belonging to persons liable for tax by claiming them as their own. Offenders will be punished and goods confiscated. Inns and warehouses storing travellers’ merchandise must be duly reported and taxed.Footnote 57

While the judicial decisions and imperial edicts recorded in the Yuan dianzhang date from 1268 to 1319 – mostly during the reign of the Great Khan Kublai – they continued to serve as precedents well beyond this period.Footnote 58 These cases indicate that tax-exempt religious groups were deeply involved in the commercial life of Mongol-Yuan China, often using their inns and warehouses to help merchants avoid taxes. When European merchants in Khanbaliq and Zayton established bases near or within church properties, they tapped into a longstanding commercial-religious culture. While there is no proof that Europeans deliberately evaded taxes, this practice of combining religious and commercial spaces offered them significant convenience and stability in their trade.

Diplomatic partnership: tribute and trade

Medieval merchants and friars not only frequently travelled together, but also jointly undertook diplomatic missions, presenting themselves as a unified entity. For example, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo received privileges, letters and diplomatic missions from Pope Gregory x (r. 1271–6), alongside the Dominican friars Niccolò of Vicenza and William of Tripoli, and departed Acre together.Footnote 59 John of Marignolli records that at Easter in 1339, the papal legation to which he belonged waited in Naples for the return embassy of the Great Khan Toghon Temür and that the two delegations subsequently travelled together via Constantinople to Khanbaliq.Footnote 60 The Great Khan’s embassy, comprising Genoese merchants and Mongol nobles, was led by Andrew the Frank (i.e. Andrew de Nassio).Footnote 61 John does not, however, name its members or further clarify the role of these Genoese merchants. The following discussion examines several Chinese and Latin records that shed light on the distinctive patterns of collaboration between merchants and friars at the court of the Great Khan.

A notable Chinese source is the account of the Yuan literatus Zhu Derun (1294–1365), who in 1347 recorded two embassies from the Kingdom of Folin as reported to him by Yuehunan (Yohanan) and Sanzhutai (Saljutai), former palace guards of Emperor Renzong (Buyantu Khan, r. 1311–20). This account is preserved in Zhu Derun’s literary miscellany entitled Yiyu shuo [Report on a foreign land], transmitted in a Ming dynasty block-printed edition. It contains references to two papal missions from the first half of the fourteenth century.

In the winter of the Dinghai year [1347] in the Zhizheng reign [1341–68], I stayed in the Baojianzhai of the Qianyuan abbey in Jingkou. It happened that Yohanan, the jianjun [inspector] of Piling, and Saljutai, the tongzhi [sub-prefect] of Pingyang, visited me together and told me the following: when they served in the Yanyou reign [1314–20] as the [imperial] palace guards and court attendants, envoys from the Kingdom of Fo li n came to court and reported: their territory lies in the region where the sun sets. The land is very extensive and has seventy-two chieftains. In the land there is a mercury sea whose circumference amounts to about forty to fifty li [Chinese mile] … the local inhabitants immediately retrieve the mercury and boil it together with aromatic herbs, so that everything becomes fine silver. In their land one also knows how to spin wool and make fabrics from it; they call it suofu [wool fabrics]. One uses mixidan [pistachio leaves] for dyeing, whereby the fabric becomes dark green and does not fade when washed. Furthermore, carpets and silk brocades are all common products. In the Renwu year [1342] of the Zhizheng reign, [Fo li n] offered a black horse as tribute that was over nine chi [Chinese feet] tall and whose mane and tail hung down seven chi to the ground; this one also came from their land. The envoys who came spent four years to reach Kishm [Kashmir] and another four years to reach zhongzhou [Central China]. Only after they had crossed the seven seas did they arrive at the capital city Khanbaliq.Footnote 62

These envoys were identified as coming from the Kingdom of Folin. In Chinese sources, the term Fulin or Folin most commonly denotes the Roman empire;Footnote 63 in the Mongol period, however, Fulin or Folin is more plausibly understood as a transliteration of ‘Frank’, a term used for Latin Christians during the Crusades era that entered Chinese through Arabic Firanj and Persian Farang .Footnote 64 Contemporary Latin sources likewise describe Latin Christians in the Mongol empire collectively as ‘franqi/franchi’.Footnote 65 The ‘Kingdom of Folin’ is further characterised in the report as ‘the region where the sun sets’, a phrase that corresponds to the Latin Occidentales (West) as opposed to Orientales (East).Footnote 66 A parallel formulation appears in a 1336 letter of the Great Khan Toghon Temür, who addressed the pope as the ruler ‘in the land of the Franks, beyond the seven seas, where the sun sets’.Footnote 67 Therefore, the ‘envoys from the Kingdom of Folin’ mentioned by the imperial palace guards are most plausibly identified as papal envoys, since they were the only known diplomatic missions from the ‘West’ to the Great Khan’s court at that time. As first argued by Chen Dezhi, the embassy recorded for the Yanyou reign (1314–20) corresponds to the mission led by Andrew of Perugia and dispatched by Pope Clement v (r. 1305–14).Footnote 68 Subsequently, Zhu Derun supplements information about a later mission in the Renwu year (1342) of the Zhizheng reign from the ‘Kingdom of Folin’. This can be identified with confidence as the papal embassy of John of Marignolli and his Franciscan companions, dispatched by Pope Benedict xii (r. 1334–42) in 1338.Footnote 69 The Chinese account of papal missions in Yiyu shuo provides a different perspective from that of Latin accounts by focusing on the value of European goods. The items it details – mercury that could be refined into silver, non-fading textiles and fine horses – were not only curiosities but also valuable commodities. This focus aligns with the established culture of tributary diplomacy and the ortoq merchant system at the Great Khan’s court.

The mission sent by Benedict xii to the Great Khan Toghon Temür inspired a wave of artistic and literary works at the imperial court, including the painting of ‘the Kingdom of Folang presenting a horse’ (also known as ‘Heavenly horse’) by Zhou Lang (fl. mid-fourteenth century), the painting of ‘three steeds’ by Ren Xianzuo (c. 1287–1358) and celebratory poems composed by the literati Jie Xisi (1274–1344), Ouyang Xuan (1283–1358), Zhou Boqi (1298–1369) and many others.Footnote 70 In these works by court painters and literati, as well as in the Yuanshi [History of the Yuan] – the official dynastic history compiled shortly after the fall of the Yuan – the ‘heavenly horse’ was consistently framed as formal tribute from the kingdom of the Franks (Folin/Fulang/Folang). Terminology conveying the act of ‘offering tribute’ – expressed through terms such as 貢 (gong), 進 (jin) or 獻 (xian) – is used throughout these sources, while the Kingdom of the Franks is described as a ‘subject’ of the Great Khan.Footnote 71 For instance, the Yuanshi records that ‘the Kingdom of the Franks offered an extraordinary horse as tribute’.Footnote 72 The appraisal of the ‘heavenly horse’ composed by Jie Xisi, inscribed on the scroll of Zhou Lang’s painting, includes the following passage: ‘Your subject of the Kingdom of Folang / From the remote and limitless Western Deeps / Having received civilising transformation, we submit a tribute / Wishing to submit to Your sagely and enlightened rule.’Footnote 73 Ouyang Xuan likewise praised in his poem the arrival of the ‘heavenly horse’ as evidence of the Great Khan’s enlightened rule and the submission of all kingdoms, attributing this to the Khan’s benevolence, virtue and wisdom.Footnote 74 In these Chinese sources, the ‘heavenly horse’ became the protagonist and bore symbolic meaning. As Eugene Y. Wang has suggested, the auspicious omen of the ‘heavenly horse’ was crucial to the Great Khan Toghon Temür, as it arrived just after he had outmanoeuvred Chancellor Bayan (?–1340) to seize full control of the empire, marking a new era by changing his reign title to Zhizheng (1341–70).Footnote 75

The horse presented, however, was not intended as tribute from Pope Benedict xii to the Great Khan. Records preserved in the Apostolic Camera indicate that the diplomatic gifts ( ensennia ) commissioned by papal order for the Great Khan, and possibly also for Özbeg Khan of the Golden Horde, consisted exclusively of fine textiles. These included ‘two pieces of green Catalan cloth and two pieces of large-format green cloth from Loano, bought from Philip of the Bonacursi company for 232 florins’, together with ‘two pieces of green Catalan cloth bought from Hugh of the Asti company for 96 florins, and one large-format piece of blue-grey cloth from Loano and one medium-format piece from Melins, for a further 84 florins’.Footnote 76

The 1336 letter sent from Khanbaliq attests that the horse had been explicitly requested by the Great Khan himself, whose envoys, led by Andrew the Frank, were accordingly dispatched to ‘bring from where the sun sets horses and other marvellous things’.Footnote 77 This indicates that Andrew and his companions likely served as the khan’s ortoq merchants, a reflection of the Turkic term ortaq (‘partner’), referring to agents tasked with purchasing valuable goods from abroad on the khan’s behalf.Footnote 78 Documents preserved in the Venetian State Archive further reveal that the horses for the Great Khan were to be purchased in Venice by the Genoese merchant Andalò da Savignone, who is described as an envoy ( ambaxator/nuncius ) of the Great Khan and identified as a companion of Andrew the Frank.Footnote 79 In addition to five to ten horses, Andalò purchased jewels valued at up to 2,000 florins. Clearly, these valuables were not intended as mere gifts but rather as merchandise for sale to the Great Khan, from which Genoese merchants likely derived considerable profits. A comparable pattern is reflected in the account of Marco Polo, who also may have served as the khan’s ortoq merchant. He recounts that the Polos presented jewels to Berke Khan (r. 1257–66), who paid more than twice their actual value.Footnote 80 Taken together, this evidence suggests that the ‘heavenly horse’ was not a papal tribute gift in origin, but rather commodities circulating within a system of court-directed ortoq commerce and subsequently reframed within Yuan tributary discourse.

The envoys of the Great Khan – Andrew the Frank, Andalò da Savignone, and their companions, mostly Genoese merchants – arrived at the papal curia in Avignon in early June 1338, where they were granted plenary indulgences and safe-conduct by Pope Benedict xii, before departing for Mongol-Yuan China in 1338–9.Footnote 81 At the same time, Benedict dispatched a papal legation to travel with them to the Great Khan in response to his message, providing the four papal legates with 1,500 florins for travel expenses.Footnote 82 According to Francesco Balducci Pegolotti’s estimate in the Pratica della mercatura , the overland journey from Tana in the Golden Horde to China required between 300 and 400 florins per person (60–80 sommi). Based on this, the papal funds were barely sufficient to cover the legates’ expenses en route. Footnote 83 In his account of the journey, the papal legate John of Marignolli describes both the gifts presented to the Mongol khans and their favourable reception. At the court of Özbeg Khan, John reports that ‘we presented [to him] letters, cloths, a destrier, theriac and the gifts of the pope’, and that in return ‘we were well fed, clothed and magnificently rewarded, and provided with the khan’s horses and at his expense’.Footnote 84 Since the papal records do not specify gifts intended for Özbeg Khan, some of these offerings, in particular the horse, were likely supplied by the Genoese merchants. Similarly, upon their arrival at the Great Khan’s court in August 1342, John records the Great Khan’s delight at receiving them, together with ‘the destriers, the papal gifts, the sealed (papal) letters and the letters of King Robert (of Naples) with gold’.Footnote 85 In his narrative, John then places himself at the centre of the ceremonial reception, describing how he entered the Great Khan’s presence in solemn vestments, preceded by a beautiful cross along with candles and incense, sang the Credo in Unum Deum , and bestowed upon the Great Khan his benediction in full.Footnote 86 While John’s account emphasises the spiritual success of the mission, Chinese sources, as discussed above, reveal that it was the ‘heavenly horse’ that most strongly captured the Great Khan’s attention, turning the friars’ embassy into a spectacular courtly event.

Read together, the Chinese and Latin sources suggest that European friars and merchants presented themselves as a unified diplomatic embassy at the Great Khan’s court. The underlying logic of this collaboration was symbiotic exchange. Merchants, by capitalising on the official diplomatic status of the friars, could present their goods in a sanctified manner, increasing their value and appeal to the Mongol rulers – as seen when the horse they bought was acclaimed as a ‘heavenly horse’ precisely because it was presented within a formal tributary context. In return, relying on these splendid items, the friars successfully navigated the ceremonial demands of the court’s tributary diplomacy, which required the presentation of valuable offerings as a condition of legitimate audience.

The collaboration between European merchants and friars in Mongol-Yuan China was a mutually beneficial partnership rooted in the commercial ethics and religious patronage of medieval Europe, but pragmatically reconfigured for a different local political, economic and cultural landscape. This partnership manifested itself in several ways. Geographically, churches and commercial establishments appear to have been strategically co-located: in Zayton, the association is directly attested by the testimony of John of Marignolli; in Khanbaliq, the proposed connection – based on archaeological evidence and urban topography – remains plausible but not conclusively documented. Economically, the friars’ privileged status – secured through imperial edicts granting protection and exemption to recognised religious communities – provided merchants with a sheltered environment for their activities. Diplomatically, friars and merchants often operated as a single unit. Their diplomatic partnership of 1338–42, documented in multiple independent sources, illustrates this dynamic particularly clearly.

The apparent silence of Franciscan sources regarding this partnership and the tendency of Chinese sources to recast papal embassies as the delivery of ‘tribute’ and ‘treasures’ should not be read as evidence of separate or unrelated activities. Rather, they reflect culturally conditioned views of the same collaboration. Only by reading these corpora together, in light of their respective institutional conventions, can the practical realities of friar-merchant collaboration be recovered. More broadly, this study points to structural connections between mendicant mobility, diplomatic exchange and Eurasian trade networks. Extending this framework to other Mongol khanates and incorporating Persian and Arabic perspectives remains an important direction for future research.

Footnotes

I thank Peng Xiaoyu, the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this Journal for their valuable comments and suggestions. I thank Mark Dickens for his proofreading. All translations are my own unless otherwise stated.

References

1 For recent studies on the relationship between commerce and religion in different civilisations see Y. Li, Networks of faith and profit: monks, merchants, and exchanges between China and Japan, 839–1403 CE, Cambridge 2025; J. W. Chaffee, The Muslim merchants of premodern China: the history of a maritime Asian trade diaspora, 750–1400, Cambridge 2018; J. L. Goldberg, Trade and institutions in the medieval Mediterranean: the Geniza merchants and their business world, Cambridge 2012; F. Trivellato, The familiarity of strangers: the Sephardic diaspora, Livorno, and cross-cultural trade in the early modern period, New Haven, Ct 2009; L. Clossey, Salvation and globalization in the early Jesuit missions, Cambridge 2008; and T. Sen, Buddhism, diplomacy and trade: the realignment of India-China relations, 600–1400, Honolulu 2003.

2 For recent studies on mendicant friars in the Mongol Empire see T. Tanase, ‘Jusqu’aux Limites du monde’: la papauté et la mission franciscaine, de l’Asie de Marco Polo à l’Amérique de Christophe Colomb, Rome 2013; P. Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410, 2nd edn, London–New York 2014, 256–89; J. Richard, La Papauté et les missions d’Orient au moyen âge, Rome 1977; G. Fedalto, La chiesa latina in Oriente, ii, Verona 1973; and I. de Rachewiltz, Papal envoys to the Great Khans, Stanford, Ca 1971. For recent studies on European merchants in the Mongol Empire see R. Liberati, ‘Forging bonds across continents: Italian merchants and Īl-Khānid diplomacy’, Crossroads xxii (2023), 26–50; N. Di Cosmo, ‘Mongols and merchants on the Black Sea frontier in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: convergences and conflicts’, in R. Amitai and M. Biran (eds), Mongols, Turks, and others, Leiden 2005, 391–424; R. S. Lopez, ‘Nouveaux documents sur les marchands italiens en Chine à l’époque mongole’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres cxxi–cxxii (1977), 445–58; R. S. Lopez, ‘Nuove luci sugli Italiani in Estremo Oriente prima di Colombo’, in his Su e giù per la storia di Genova, Genoa 1975, 83–136; M. Balard, ‘Les Génois en Asie centrale et en extrême-orient au xive siècle: un cas exceptionnel’, in E. Perroy (ed.), Économies et sociétés au moyen âge: mélanges offerts à Edouard Perroy, Paris 1973, 681–9; and L. Petech, ‘Les Marchands italiens dans l’empire mongol’, Journal asiatique ccl (1962), 549–74.

3 The standard edition of the source and its English translation are SF, I: Itinera et relationes fratrum minorum saeculi XIII et XIV, ed. A. van den Wyngaert, Quaracchi 1929, and Mission to Asia, trans. C. Dawson, New York 1966.

4 For an overview of Chinese administrative documents in the Mongol-Yuan period see Y. Funada, ‘On Chinese document materials during the Mongol-Yuan period: expanding the reach of document materials by means of transmission and compilation’, MRDTB lxxxii (2024), 31–63.

5 Chinese sources mentioning Latin Europeans have been noted in previous scholarship, including, for example, W. Fuchs, ‘Ein Gesandtschaftsbericht über Fu-lin in chinesischer Wiedergabe aus den Jahren 1314–1320’, Oriens Extremus vi/2 (1959), 123–30, and A. C. Moule, Christians in China before the year 1550, London 1930, 216–64.

6 On the socioeconomic background of the Franciscan order’s emergence see G. Todeschini, Franciscan wealth: from voluntary poverty to market society, trans. D. Melucci, New York 2009, 11–43, and L. Little, Religious poverty and the profit economy in medieval Europe, Ithaca, NY 1978, 146–52.

7 A. Vauchez, Francis of Assisi: the life and afterlife of a medieval saint, trans. M. F. Cusato, New Haven, Ct 2012, 7, 11; R. J. Armstrong, J. A. W. Hellman and W. J. Short (eds), Francis of Assisi: early documents, II: The founder, New York 2000, 89.

8 Fontes Franciscani, ed. E. Menestò and S. Brufani, Assisi 1995, 176; Vauchez, Francis of Assisi, 47.

9 On the Christianisation of commercial activities by mendicant friars see B. Rosenwein and L. Little, ‘Social meaning in the monastic and mendicant spiritualities’, Past & Present no. 63 (May 1974), 4–32.

10 Todeschini, Franciscan wealth, 128–9; J. Le Goff, Saint François d’Assise, Paris 1999, 173–5.

11 T. E. L. Chubb and E. D. Kelley (eds), Mendicants and merchants in the medieval Mediterranean, Leiden 2013, 12.

12 Ibid. 1.

13 Ibid. 2; J. Aurell, ‘They are the treasure of the commonwealth: Franciscan charisma and merchant culture in medieval Barcelona’, Religions xiv/6 (2023), 1–14 at p. 7.

14 Todeschini, Franciscan wealth, 130.

15 On the itinerant nature of mendicant orders see Società internazionale di Studi francescani and Centro Interuniversitario di Studi Francescani (eds), Frati mendicanti in itinere (secc. XIII–XIV): atti del XLVII Convegno internazionale: Assisi-Magione, 17–19 ottobre 2019, Spoleto 2020.

16 G. G. Guzman, ‘European clerical envoys to the Mongols: reports of Western merchants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, 1231–1255’, Journal of Medieval History xxii/1 (1996), 53–67 at p. 65.

17 R. Goffen, Spirituality in conflict: Saint Francis and Giotto’s Bardi chapel, University Park, Pa 1988.

18 Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, ed. A. Evans, Cambridge 1936.

19 Tanase, ‘Jusqu’aux Limites du monde’, 314.

20 R. S. Lopez, ‘European merchants in the medieval Indies: the evidence of commercial documents’, Journal of Economic History iii/2 (1943), 164–84 at p. 165.

21 F. Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: die Mongolen im Urteil des Abendlandes vom 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert, Sigmaringen 1994, 162.

22 W. D. Phillips Jr, ‘Voluntary strangers: European merchants and missionaries in Asia during the late Middle Ages’, in F. R. P. Akehurst and S. C. Van d’Elden (eds), The stranger in medieval society, Minneapolis, Mn 1997, 14–26.

23 A. Tilatti, ‘Stanchi di viaggiare? Giovanni da Montecorvino e Odorico da Pordenone’, in Frati mendicanti, 321–59 at pp. 329–30. For similar instances see Tanase, ‘Jusqu’aux Limites du monde’, 312.

24 R. Hautala, ‘Western missionaries and merchants: an example of cooperation within the framework of the Mongol Empire’, Тюркологические исследования [Turkological Studies] i/4 (2018), 42–66.

25 J. McClure, ‘The globalisation of Franciscan poverty’, Journal of World History xxx/3 (2019), 335–62 at p. 335.

26 Ibid. 336–7.

27 On St Francis and the Fifth Crusade see B. Bombi, ‘The Fifth Crusade and the conversion of the Muslims’, in E. J. Mylod, G. Perry, T. W. Smith and J. Vandeburie (eds), The Fifth Crusade in context, New York 2017, 68–91.

28 Fontes Franciscani, 332.

29 On the transmission and the dissemination of missionary reports from the East see C. Gadrat, ‘Des Nouvelles d’Orient: les lettres des missionnaires et leur diffusion en Occident (xiiie-xive siècles)’, in J. Ducos and P. Henriet (eds), Passages: déplacements des hommes, circulation des textes et identités dans l’Occident médiéval, Toulouse 2013, 159–72.

30 C. Erickson, ‘The fourteenth-century Franciscans and their critics’, Franciscan Studies xxxv/1 (1975), 107–35; xxxvi/1 (1976), 108–47.

31 Martyrdom emerged as a prominent theme in Franciscan historiography during the order’s fourteenth-century crisis. See C. MacEvitt, The martyrdom of the Franciscans: Islam, the papacy, and an order in conflict, Philadelphia, Pa 2020.

32 ‘Set quod fere urgente consciencia siluerimus, ne forte infirmos aliquos attraheret aliquantulum alleviamen aliquod et leuis sufferencia’: A. C. Moule, ‘Textus duarum epistolarum Fr. Minorum Tartarie Aquilonaris an. 1323’, AFH xvi/1–2 (1923), 104–12 at p. 108.

33 On John of Montecorvino see P. Sella, Giovanni da Montecorvino, frate minore e primo vescovo in terra di Cina, 1307–1328, S. Maria degli Angeli, Assisi 2008.

34 ‘In isto autem anno. Domini M° CCC° V° ego incepi unum alium locum novum coram hostio domini Chanis, et inter curiam et locum nostrum via sola est, distans per iactum lapidis a porta domini Chanis. Dominus Petrus de Lucalongo fidelis christianus et magnus mercator, qui fuit socius meus de Thaurisio, ipse emit terram pro loco quem dixi, et dedit mihi amore Dei et divina gratia operante, quia utilior et congruentior locus haberi non posset in tot imperio domini Chanis pro ecclesia catholica construenda. In principio augusti locum accepi, et assistentibus benefactoribus et iuvantibus, usque ad festum S. Francisci fuit completus cum muro in circuitu et domibus officinis planis et oratorio, quod est capax ducentarum personarum … Dominus Chaam in camera sua potest audire voces nostras’: SF i. 352–3.

35 On Khanbaliq see G. Chen, The capital of the Yuan dynasty, trans. P. Poon, Honolulu 2015, and Z. Ouyang, Ancient Beijing and western civilization, trans. H. Li, Abingdon–New York 2025. For the primary historical records of Khanbaliq see 熊梦祥 [Xiong Mengxiang], 析津志辑佚 [A compilation of the scattered writings of the ‘Gazetteer of Xijin’], Beijing 1983. The original Gazetteer of Xijin is no longer extant; the current edition reconstructs the text from passages preserved in later compilations, including the Yongle Encyclopedia (1408). See Ouyang, Ancient Beijing and western civilization, 40–1. The archaeological findings for Yuan Dadu (Khanbaliq in Latin sources) are presented in 中国社会科学院考古研究所 [The Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences] and 北京市文物管理处 [Beijing Municipal Management Office of Cultural Relics] (eds), 元大都:1964–1974 年考古报告 [Yuan Dadu: archaeological report, 1964–1974], Beijing 2024.

36 徐蘋芳 [P. Xu], ‘北京房山十字寺也里可温石刻 [A study of the Yelikewen inscriptions at the Cross Temple in Fangshan, Beijing]’, in 中國考古學研究編委會 [Editorial committee of archaeological research in China] (ed.), 中國考古學研究: 夏鼐先生考古五十年紀念論文集 [Chinese archaeological research: collection of papers commemorating Xia Nai’s fifty years in archaeology], Beijing 1986, 309–16 at pp. 310–11. According to Xu’s research (at pp. 311–14), the only East Syriac Christian church in Yuan Dadu was located within Jinggong Ward, on the north-east side of Houzai Red Gate. It was not far from John’s church, but was not as close to the imperial palace as the latter.

37 林梅村 [M. Lin], ‘元人畫跡中的歐洲傳教士 [European missionaries in Yuan dynasty paintings]’, in idem, 大朝春秋─蒙元考古與藝術 [The great dynasty chronicles: Mongol-Yuan archaeology and art], Beijing 2013, 271–95 at p. 279.

38 孟凡人 [F. Meng], ‘元大都的城建規劃與元大都和明北京城的中軸線問題 [The construction plans for Yuan Dadu and the question of the relationship between the Yuan and Ming central south-north axes of Beijing]’, 故宮學刊 [Palace Museum Journal] i (2006), 96–121 at p. 117.

39 林梅村 [M. Lin], ‘馬可波羅在北京 [Marco Polo in Beijing]’, in his The great dynasty chronicles: Mongol-Yuan archaeology and art, 169–91 at p. 182.

40 ‘a ceste ville vienent plus chieres chouses et de greingnor vailance, et les greignor quantités que en nulle ville dou munde; et plus merchandies hi se vendent et achatent, car sachiés de voir qe chascun jor hi entre en ceste ville plus de M. charete chargies de soie, car il se laborent maint dras d’ors et de soie’: Marco Polo, Le Devisement dou monde, I: Testo, secondo la lezione del codice fr. 1116 della Bibliothèque Nationale de France, ed. M. Eusebi; II: Glossario, by E. Burgio, Venice 2018, 118.

41 SF i. 346, 352.

42 Diplomatarium veneto-levantinum: sive acta et diplomata res venetas, graecas atque levantis illustrantia, ed. G. M. Thomas, Venice 1880–99, i/A: 1300–1350, 243, no. 125.

43 On Zayton see A. Schottenhammer (ed.), The emporium of the world: maritime Quanzhou, 1000–1400, Leiden 2000. See also S. Lieu and others, Medieval Christian and Manichaean remains from Quanzhou (Zayton), Turnhout 2011.

44 SF i. 375–6.

45 ‘Est etiam Zayton, portus maris mirabilis civitas, nobis incredibilis, ubi fratres Minores habent tres ecclesias pulcherrimas, optimas et ditissimas, balneum, fundacum, omnium mercatorum depositorium’: Giovanni de’ Marignolli, Relatio: un frate francescano nella Cina e nell’India del XIV secolo: note e traduzione a cura di Paola Mocella, testo critico di Irene Malfatto, Pisa 2022, 70.

46 For the relevant corpus see 元代白話碑集錄 [Collected Yuan-dynasty vernacular stele inscriptions], ed. 蔡美彪 [M. Cai], 2nd edn, Beijing 2017. For recent scholarship on tax exemptions granted to religious communities see W. Cho, ‘Negotiated privilege: strategic tax exemptions policies for religious groups and the Mongol-Yuan dynasty in 13th-century China’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient lxiii (2020), 1–37.

47 For an overview of the nature and function of stone-inscribed documents in the Mongol-Yuan period see Funada, ‘On Chinese document materials during the Mongol-Yuan period’, 39–41.

48 ‘長生天氣力裏、大福蔭護助裏皇帝聖旨: 軍官每根底, 軍人每根底, 管[城]子的達魯花赤、官人每根底, 往來的使臣每根底, 宣諭的聖旨: 成吉思皇帝、月闊台皇帝、薛禪皇帝、完澤篤皇帝、曲律皇帝、普顏篤皇帝、潔堅皇帝、護都篤皇帝、亦憐眞班皇帝聖旨裏: “和尚、也里可温、先生、答失蠻每, 不揀甚麼差發休着者, 告天祝壽者。”說來有。如今依着在先聖旨體例, 不揀甚麼差發休當者, 告天與咱每根底祝壽者, 麼道。… 這的每宮觀裏他每的 [房舍]裏, 使臣休安下者。鋪馬祗應休拿者。地稅商稅休與者。但[屬宮] 觀的莊田、水土、園林、碾磨、船隻、竹葦、解典庫、店舍、鋪席、 [浴堂、醋] 麴等物, 但凡甚麼差發休着者。不揀是誰, 休倚氣力奪 [要者。更, 每] 年得來的錢物, 不揀甚麼, 交先生每收拾者。損壞 [了宮觀呵, 交] 用那錢物脩補者。更, 這的每其間裏, 不揀是誰, 休人 [去沮壞者] 。… 聖旨。至正元年蛇兒年六月, 上 [都有時分寫] 來’: ibid. 232–4.

49 SF i. 353.

50 Ibid. i. 374.

51 Odorico da Pordenone, Relatio de mirabilibus orientalium Tatarorum, ed. A. Marchisio, Florence 2016, 210–1; de’ Marignolli, Relatio, 62.

52 ‘這的每觀裏房舍裏, 使臣休安下者。鋪馬祇應休要者, 稅粮休與者。但屬觀裏的田產、人口、頭疋、園林、水磨、店舍、鋪席、解典庫、浴堂, 不揀甚麼他每的, 不揀是誰, 休奪要者, 休使氣力者’ [Envoys shall not take lodging in the rooms and quarters of this abbey; post horses and provisioning shall not be requisitioned; grain taxes shall not be levied. As for all property belonging to the abbey – fields, people, livestock, gardens, water mills, shops, stalls, pawnshops and bathhouses – no matter what it may be, and no matter who it is, no one shall seize or forcibly appropriate any of it]: 元大都: 1964–1974年考古报告 [Yuan Dadu: archaeological report, 1964–1974], 265–6; ‘這的每寺院裏房舍, 使臣休安下者。鋪馬祇應休著者。稅糧商稅休納者。但屬寺家的水土、園林、碾磨、店鋪、解典庫、浴堂、人口、頭疋, 不揀甚麼, 不揀是誰休倚氣力奪要者’ [In the rooms and quarters of each and every abbey, envoys shall not take lodging. Post horses and provisioning shall not be requisitioned. Grain taxes and commercial taxes shall not be levied. As for all property belonging to the abbey – lands and waters, gardens, mills, shops, pawnshops, bathhouses, people and livestock – no matter what it may be, and no matter who it is, no one shall use force to seize or appropriate it]: Cai, Collected Yuan-dynasty vernacular stele inscriptions, 243.

53 ‘Nullus omnino nuncius ad recedendum exercitum vadens, ab illis nomine exercitus abstrahat, nec voituram aut aliud eis dampnificum ab illis accipiat; vectigalium vel tributorum officiales nec tributum nec censum ab eis accipiant nec exigant, nec aliquid de rebus ipsorum contingant. Nemo eis violenciam inferat aut oppressionem, ecclesiam frangendo vel domos aut loca destruendo eorum’: A. C. Moule, ‘Textus trium novorum documentorum e Tartaria Aquilonari an. 1314–1322’, AFH xvii (1924), 65–71 at p. 65.

54 de’ Marignolli, Relatio, 70.

55 On origins, contents and transmission of the Yuan dianzhang see B. Birge, Marriage and the law in the age of Khubilai Khan: cases from the Yuan dianzhang, Cambridge, Ma 2017, 57–77.

56 ‘議得: 和尚、先生、也里可温、荅失蠻人口, 多是夾帶俗人, 過番買賣, 影射避免抽分。今後和尚、先生、也里可温、荅失蠻人口等過番興販, 如無執把聖旨許免抽分明文, 仰市舶司依例抽分。如違, 以漏舶論罪斷没’: 元典章: 大元聖政國朝典章 [Yuan dianzhang: statutes and precedents of the sacred administration of the Great Yuan dynastic state], ed. 陳高華,張帆,劉曉,党寶海 [G. Chen, F. Zhang, X. Liu and B. Dang], Tianjin–Beijing 2011, ii. 877.

57 ‘和尚、也里可温、先生、答失蠻買賣不須納稅, 却不得將合納稅之人等物貨, 妄作己物夾帶影蔽。違者取問是實, 犯人斷罪, 物貨沒官。其店肆塌房, 客旅停塌物貨依例銷報納稅’: ibid. ii. 958.

58 Birge, Marriage and the law in the age of Khubilai Khan, 1–2.

59 Major versions of the Description of the world vary slightly in their accounts of this episode. In the F version, the Polo family and the Dominican friars jointly receive papal privileges, letters and diplomatic commissions. ‘Il done elz brevilejes et carte et sa enbasee de ce qu’il voloit mander au Grant Kaan. Et quant meser Nicolau et meser Mafeu et les deus freres presceor ont recevu les brevile‹j›es et le carte et l’anbaxae de mesere l’apostoille, il se font doner sa benedicion, puis se partirent tuit e quatre’: Marco Polo, Le Devisement dou monde, 41.

60 de’ Marignolli, Relatio, 60.

61 On Andrew the Frank see B. Z. Kedar, ‘Chi era Andrea Franco?’, in Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, Genoa 1977, 369–77. On the embassy to Pope Benedict xii by the Great Khan Toghon Temür see J. Nam, ‘The envoy to Pope Benedict xii sent by the Great Khan in 1336’, 서양중세사연구 [Journal of Western Medieval History] xliv (2019), 101–26, and C. Concina, ‘Da Pechino ad Avignone e oltre: la corrispondenza tra Benedetto xii, il «qaghan» Toghon-Temür e i principi Alani nella traduzione francese di Jean le Long (1351)’, Itineraria xvii (2018), 109–60.

62 ‘至正丁亥冬, 寓京口乾元宫之寶儉齋, 適毗陵監郡岳忽難、平陽同知散竺台偕來訪。自言延祐間忝宿衛近侍時, 有佛𣇰國使來朝, 偹言其域當日没之處, 土地甚廣, 有七十二酋長, 地有水銀海, 周圍可四五十里。… 然後其國人旋取之。用香草同煎, 皆花銀也。其地又能撚毛爲布, 謂之梭福, 用密昔丹葉染成沉綠, 浣之不淡。其餘𣰽毺錦曡, 皆常産也。至正壬午間, 獻黑馬, 高九尺餘, 鬉尾垂地七尺, 即其地所産。來使四年至乞失密, 又四年至中州, 過七度海, 方抵京師焉’: 朱德潤 [Zhu Derun], 存復齋集 [Collected works of Cunfuzhai], based on the Ming dynasty block-printed edition held in the Changshu Qushi Tieqin Tongjian Lou [Iron Lute Bronze Sword Library of the Qu Family, Changshu], reproduced in facsimile by Hanfenlou, v/5, Shanghai 1923, 11–12. On this source see Fuchs, ‘Ein Gesandtschaftsbericht über Fu-lin in chinesischer Wiedergabe aus den Jahren 1314–1320’, 123–30; 陳得芝 [D. Chen], ‘元仁宗時教皇使者來華的一條漢文史料 [One Chinese historical source on the papal envoy’s visit to China during the reign of Emperor Renzong]’, in 南開大学歴史系 [Faculty of History of Nankai University] (ed.), 中國史論集 [Collected studies on Chinese history], Tianjin 1994, 288–92. For English translation and further discussion, see M. T. T. Hui, ‘Writing empire: culture, politics, and the representation of cultural others in the Mongol-Yuan dynasty’, unpubl. PhD diss. Harvard 2020, 161.

63 On the term Fulin see F. Hirth, ‘The mystery of Fu-lin’, Journal of the American Oriental Society xxx/1 (1909), 1–31; xxxiii (1913), 193–208, and K. Shiratori, ‘A new attempt at the solution of the Fu-lin problem’, MRDTB xv (1965), 165–329. On the term Folin referring to the Roman empire see Y. Wang and W. Lin, ‘Discovery of an incantation of St George in ritual manuscripts of a Chinese folk society’, Monumenta Serica lxvi/1 (2018), 115–30 at pp. 122–4.

64 On oriental terms referring to the Latin Christians see D. G. König, Arabic-Islamic views of the Latin West: tracing the emergence of medieval Europe, Oxford 2015, esp. pp. 7, 216, 227–8.

65 Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, 22; de’ Marignolli, Relatio, 60.

66 On the Chinese term ‘the region where the sun sets’ see 廖大珂 [D. Liao], ‘“日落國”考證– 兼論明代中國與羅馬教廷的交往 [A study of the “Sunset State”: with a discussion on the interactions between Ming China and the Holy See]’, in 廈門大學學報(哲學社會科學版) [Journal of Xiamen University, Arts & Social Sciences] clxx (2005), 108–14.

67 ‘in Franchiam ultra septem maria, ubi sol occidit’: Concina, ‘Da Pechino ad Avignone e oltre’, 152.

68 陳得芝 [D. Chen], ‘元仁宗時教皇使者來華的一條漢文史料 [One Chinese historical source on the papal envoy’s visit to China during the reign of Emperor Renzong]’, 291–2.

69 On the mission sent by Pope Benedict xii to the Great Khan Toghon Temür in 1338 see N. Wu, ‘East-West encounters in the fourteenth century: John of Marignolli and the “tribute” horse’, Speculum c/4 (2025), 1084–1111; Hui, ‘Writing empire’, 134–72; Tanase, ‘Jusqu’aux Limites du monde’, 473; Richard, La Papauté, 153; and H. Franke, ‘Die Gesandtschaft des Johann von Marignola im Spiegel der chinesischen Literatur’, in L. Brüll and U. Kemper (eds), Asien. Tradition und Fortschritt. Festschrift für Horst Hammitzsch zu seinem 60. Geburtstag, Wiesbaden 1971, 117–34, and ‘Das “himmlische Pferd” des Johann von Marignola’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte l (1968), 33–40.

70 The Palace Museum in Beijing preserves Ren Xianzuo’s ‘Three steeds’ and a Ming-dynasty copy of Zhou Lang’s ‘Heavenly horse’, the original of the latter now being lost. While Zhou Lang was an eyewitness commissioned by the imperial court to execute his painting, Ren Xianzuo presented his work to the court as an independent submission. On these paintings and their provenance see Wu, ‘East-West encounters in the fourteenth century’, 1100–2; Hui, ‘Writing empire’, 137–40, 164–72; E. Y. Wang, ‘Why was there no Chinese painting of Marco Polo?’, in K. Gludovatz, J. Noth and J. Rees (eds), The itineraries of art: topographies of artistic mobility in Europe and Asia, Paderborn 2015, 85–105 at pp. 85–8; Lin, ‘European missionaries in Yuan dynasty paintings’, 284–95; and 余暉 [H. Yu], ‘九峰道人〈三駿圖〉卷考略及其他 [A study of the Daoist Jiufeng’s “Three Steeds Scroll” and related issues]’, in 文物 [Cultural Relics], i (1993), 93–6. The poems on the ‘heavenly horse’ have been translated and analysed in Hui, ‘Writing empire’, 137–59, 219–24.

71 ‘佛朗國貢異馬 [The Kingdom of the Franks offered an extraordinary horse as tribute]’: 元史 [History of the Yuan], ed. 宋濂 [Song Lian] and others, Beijing 1976, 864; ‘拂郎國進天馬 [The Kingdom of the Franks presented a heavenly horse as tribute]’: 歐陽玄 [Ouyang Xuan], 歐陽玄集 [Works of Ouyang Xuan], ed. 陳書良 [S. Chen] and 劉娟 [J. Liu], Changsha 2010, 8. For English translation see Hui, ‘Writing empire’, 144. ‘西域佛郎國遣使獻馬 [The Kingdom of Folang in the Western Regions sent envoys to present a horse]’: 顧嗣立 [Gu Sili], 元詩選 初集 [Selected Yuan poetry, first collection], Beijing 1987, 1864; for English translation see Hui, ‘Writing empire’, 219.

72 元史 [History of the Yuan], 864.

73 ‘臣拂郎國, 邈限西溟, 蒙化效貢, 願歸聖明’: 揭傒斯 [Jie Xisi], 揭傒斯全集 [The complete works of Jie Xisi], Shanghai 1985, 465. English translation according to Hui, ‘Writing empire’, 139–40, with modification.

74 Ouyang Xuan, Works of Ouyang Xuan, 8. For English translation and analysis see Hui, ‘Writing empire’, 144–5.

75 Wang, ‘Chinese painting of Marco Polo?’, 90–1.

76 ‘Pro 2 pannis coloris viridis de Catalano (126 fl.) et 2 peciis pannorum de Loanno coloris viridis de maiori forma (106 fl.) emptis a Philippo de societate Bonacursorum pro ensenniis mittendis de mandato pape imperatori Tartarorum 232 fl. Pro 2 peciis pannorum coloris viridis de Cathalanio emptis ab Hugone de societate Asten. (96 fl.) et pro 1 pecia panni coloris lividi de Loanno de maiori forma et alia pecia de Melinis medie forme (84 fl.) pro ensenniis 180 fl.’: Die Ausgaben der Apostolischen Kammer unter Benedikt XII., Klemens VI. und Innocenz VI. (1335–1362), ed. K. H. Schäfer, Paderborn 1914, 80.

77 ‘adducant nobis ab occasu solis equos et alia mirabilia’: Concina, ‘Da Pechino ad Avignone e oltre’, 152.

78 On ortoq merchants see E. Enkhbold, ‘The role of the ortoq in the Mongol empire in forming business partnerships’, Central Asian Survey xxxviii/2 (2019), 1–17; T. T. Allsen, ‘Mongolian princes and their merchant partners, 1200–1260’, Asia Major, 3rd ser. ii/2 (1989), 83–126.

79 Documents related to Andalo da Savignone have been found and analysed by Michel Balard and Robert Sabatino Lopez. See M. Balard, ‘Precursori di Cristoforo Colombo: i Genovesi in Estremo Oriente nel xiv secolo’, in Atti del convegno internazionale di Studi Colombiani, 13–14 ottobre 1973, Genoa 1974, 149–64 at pp. 155, 159; Lopez, ‘Nuove luci sugli Italiani in Estremo Oriente prima di Colombo’, 132, nos ix, x. The relationship between Andalò da Savignone and Andrew the Frank, as well as the identification of the latter with Andrew de Nassio, has been elucidated in Kedar, ‘Chi era Andrea Franco?’

80 The description of the world, ed. A. C. Moule and P. Pelliot, i, London 1938, 74–5.

81 For papal plenary indulgences see Benoît XII (1334–42): lettres closes et patentes intéressant les pays autres que la France, ed. J.-M. Vidal, col. 539, nos 1848–60; Benoît XII (1334–42): lettres communes analysées d’après les registres dits d’Avignon et du Vatican, ed. J.-M. Vidal, Paris 1910, ii. 68, nos 5896–908. For safe-conducts see Benoît XII (1334–42): lettres closes et patentes, col. 543, nos 1870–1 (no transcription); for the full texts see Vatican Apostolic Archive, Vatican City, Reg. Vat. 133, nos 208–11, fos 62v–63r, and Reg. Vat. 62, fo. 32v.

82 Bullarium Franciscanum, vi, ed. C. Eubel, Rome 1902, 62–3, no. 96; Die Ausgaben der Apostolischen Kammer, 76.

83 Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, 22.

84 ‘Inde ad primum Thartarorum imperatorem Usbec pervenimus et obtulimus litteras, pannos, dextrarium, tyriacam et dona pape. Et post hiemem bene pasti, vestiti et remunerati magnifice, et cum eius equis et expensis’: de’ Marignolli, Relatio, 62.

85 ‘Maximus autem Kaam, visis dextrariis et donis pape et litteris bullatis et regis etiam Roberti cum auro et nobis, gavisus est gaudio magno valde’: ibid.

86 Ibid.

Figure 0

Figure 1 Map of Khanbaliq, adapted from G. Chen, The capital of the Yuan dynasty, trans. P. Poon, Honolulu 2015, 68, with revisions and annotations by this author. © 2015 Enrich Professional Publishing, Inc; reproduced and adapted by permission.Key: 1. West Warehouse for private use; 2. East Warehouse for imperial use; 3. Church of John of Montecorvino; 4. Houzai Red Gate (northern gate of Yuan imperial palace); 5. Imperial palace; 6. Lake Jishuitan; 7. Tonghui canal; 8. Market district; 9. Bell tower.Figure 1 long description.