JORDANUS (JORDAN
Catalani) (fl. 1321-1330), French Dominican
missionary and explorer in Asia, was perhaps born at Séverac in
Aveyron, north-east of Toulouse. In 1302 he
may have accompanied the famous Thomas of Tolentino, via Negropont, to
the East; but it is only in 1321 that
we definitely discover him in western India, in the company of the same
Thomas and certain other Franciscan missionaries on their way to China.
Ill luck detained them at Tana in Salsette island, near Bombay; and here
Jordanus’ companions (“the four martyrs of Tana ”) fell victims to Moslem
fanaticism (April 7, 1321). Jordanus, escaping, worked some time at Baruch
in Gujarat, near the Nerbudda estuary, and at Suali (?) near Surat; to
his fellow-Dominicans in north Persia, he wrote two letters – the first
from Gogo in Gujarat (October 12, 1321), the
second from Tana (January 24,1323/4) – describing the progress of this
new mission. From these letters we learn that Roman attention had already
been directed, not only to the Bombay region, but also to the extreme south
of the Indian peninsula, especially to “Columbum,” Quilon, or Kulam in
Travancore; Jordanus’ words may imply that he had already started a mission
there before October 1321. From Catholic traders he had learnt that
Ethiopia (i.e. Abyssinia and Nubia) was accessible to Western Europeans;
at this very time, as we know from other sources, the earliest Latin missionaries
penetrated thither. Finally, the Epistles of Jordanus, like the
contemporary Secreta of Marino Sanuto (1306 – 1321), urge the pope
to establish. a Christian fleet upon the Indian seas. Jordanus, between
1324 and 1328 (if not earlier),
probably visited Kulam and selected it as the best centre for his future
work; it would also appear that he revisited Europe about 1328,
passing through Persia, and perhaps touching at the
great Crimean port of Soldaia or Sudak. He was appointed a bishop in
1328 and nominated by Pope John XXII. to the see of
Columbum in 1330. Together with the new bishop of Samarkand, Thomas of
Mancasola, Jordanus was commissioned to take the pall to John de Cora,
archbishop of Sultaniyah in Persia, within whose province Kulam was reckoned;
he was also commended to the Christians of south India, both east and west
of Cape Comorin, by Pope John. Either before going out to Malabar as bishop,
or during a later visit to the west, Jordanus probably wrote his Mirabilia,
which from internal evidence can only be fixed within the period 1329-1338;
in this work he furnished the best account of Indian regions, products,
climate, manners, customs, fauna and flora given by any European in the
Middle Ages – superior even to Marco Polo’s. In his triple division of
the Indies, India Major
comprises the shorelands from Malabar to Cochin China;
while India Minor stretches from Sind (or perhaps from Baluchistan) to
Malabar; and India Tertia(evidently dominated by African conceptions in
his mind) includes a vast undefined coast-region west of Baluchistan, reaching
into the neighbourhood of, but not including, Ethiopia and Prester John’s
domain. Jordanus’ Mirabilia contains the earliest clear African
identification of Prester John, and what is perhaps the first notice of
the Black Sea under that name; it refers to the author’s residence in India
Major and especially at Kulam, as well as to his travels in Armenia, north-west
Persia, the Lake Van region, and Chaldaea; and it supplies excellent descriptions
of Parsee doctrines and burial customs, of Hindu ox-worship, idol-ritual,
and suttee, and of Indian fruits, birds, animals and insects. After the
8th of April 1330 we have no more knowledge of Bishop Jordanus.
Of Jordanus’ Epistles there is only one MS., viz.
Paris; National Library, 5006 Lat., fol. 182., r. and v.; of the Mirabilia
also one MS. only, viz. London, British Museum, Additional M55.,
19,513, fols. 3, r.– 12 r. The text of the Epistles is in Quétif
and Echard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum, i.
549– 550 (Epistle I.); and in Wadding, Annales minorum, vi. 359
– 361 (Epistle II.); the text of the Mirabilia in the Paris Geog.
Soc.’s Recueil de voyages., iv. 1-68 (1839). The Papal letters referring
to Jordanus are in Raynaldus, Annales ecclesiastici, 1330,
§§ lv and lvii (April 8; Feb. 14). See also
Sir H. Yule’s Jordanus, a version of the Mirabilia with a
commentary (Hakluyt Soc., 1863) and the same editor's Cathay, giving
a version of the Epistles; with a commentary, &c. (Hak. Soc.,
1866) pp. 184-185, 192 – 196, 225 – 230; F, Kunstmann, “ Die, Mission in
Meliapor und Tana” and “ Die Mission in Columbo" in the Historische-politische
Blatter of Phillips and Görres, xxxvii. 25 – 38, 135 – 152 (Munich,
1856), &c.; C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 2
15 – 235.
(C.
R. B.)
Eleventh edition vol.15,
512a-512c