Clerics › Religious Figure
Meng Gaoweinuo
Italian Franciscan who reached Khanbaliq in 1294, built its first Catholic churches and was made the city's first archbishop by Pope Clement V
In a temple courtyard at dusk, a great bronze bell hangs at the right and incense smoke rises from a bronze urn; monks in orange robes and plainly dressed visitors walk toward a lamplit hall, lotus flowers bloom in a stone basin, and a gold prayer wheel stands at the left.
Also known as Giovanni da Montecorvino
- Roles
- Religious Figure
Giovanni da Montecorvino was an Italian Franciscan friar who had already worked as a missionary in Armenia and Persia. Sent east by Pope Nicholas IV in 1289, he travelled by sea by way of India and reached Khanbaliq, the Yuan capital, in 1294, just after Kublai's death; the new emperor, Temur, allowed him to stay. His letters to Europe of 1305 and 1306 report that he built two churches in the city, baptized several thousand people, bought and trained boys to sing the Latin office, and translated the New Testament and the Psalms into a local language, and that Prince George of the Ongud turned to the Roman church through him. In 1307 Pope Clement V created the archdiocese of Khanbaliq and named him its first archbishop. He died in Khanbaliq in 1328, and his letters remain the main source on the Catholic mission in Yuan China.
Life and times
Dates 1247 CE–1328 CE