Odoric of Pordenone on Java

This piece appeared on my Patreon account way back in 2022. I thought I’d move it here so that it would be more accessible.

The most famous European traveller of the Middle Ages is undoubtedly Marco Polo, someone so celebrated there are dozens of movies, TV series, and video games based (usually pretty loosely) on his life. But Polo wasn’t the only European to visit India and China before the sixteenth century — the list is actually rather long. Indeed, several other Latin Christians went as far as China within Polo’s lifetime, including a pair of Franciscan friars named James of Ireland and Odoric of Pordenone who travelled to China largely by sea, stopping in India and at a few places in Southeast Asia en route (Figure 1).

Fig. 1 — Three trees, one producing wine, one honey, and the other flour for making bread, from the description and depiction of Sumatra in a French manuscript of Odoric of Pordenone’s Relatio (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 2810, f.105r). There are in fact a couple of species that could produce all three (sugar, alcohol, and starch), including particularly Arenga pinnata.

About James of Ireland comparatively little is known, although he is presumed to have been the first Irishman to travel to Southeast Asia. Odoric of Pordenone’s life is considerably better documented. Odoric came from Friulia, then a territory of the Holy Roman Empire and now part of Italy. On his return from Asia in the late 1320s, he wrote an account of his travels in Latin, the Relatio de Mirabilibus Orientalium Tatarorum, the textual history of which is unfortunately rather tortuous. The original text is almost impossible to reconstruct from the many surviving manuscripts, none of which may be said to have been the ‘original’ and all of which display puzzling differences. An excellent critical edition of the Latin Relatio has been put together nonetheless (Marchisio 2016), but, as will be clear to readers of the introduction to that edition, no single recension can claim to be entirely authoritative. This may be why there is no recent translation of the whole work (of which I’m aware).

In any case, Odoric visited Java on his way to China, and his Relatio includes a well-known and fascinating description of the island. This description doesn’t vary too much between manuscripts or recensions, so I suppose it doesn’t matter much which version you use. I’ve taken the text below from the critical edition of one of the Old French recensions of Odoric’s Relatio; there were a number of French versions, and you can find an entirely different Old French text in the mid-fourteenth-century translation of the Latin by Jean de Vignay (London, British Library, Royal MS 19 D I, f.141r).

The description of Java here might be familiar, though: it is essentially the same as that found in the John Mandeville text discussed in an earlier post. As in that case, ‘Java’ here is called Jana; the ‘original’ or earliest form of Odoric’s Relatio almost certainly called it Jaua instead. Unlike other medieval European travellers, Odoric only uses this name for the island we now know as Java, and there is no confusion in his account between Java and Sumatra (or any other islands for that matter).

Fig. 2 — The great king of the island of Java and his seven vassals, from a damaged copy of Odoric’s Relatio. London, British Library, Cotton MS Otho D II, f.67v.

Odoric’s Java is an island ruled by a great king with seven vassals; this king lives in a grand palace adorned with gold and silver statues and approached by golden steps (Figure 2). The island abounds in people and also in spices. The Great Khan of the Mongols has attempted to conquer the island many times but has always been defeated (a somewhat inaccurate account of the 1292–3 Mongol invasion of Java).

Here’s the what the text says in the original; my translation follows:

[XV]
Du royaume de l’isle de Jana ou le palais est d’or et d’argent.
D’encoste celui royaume est une isle qui a non [1]
Jana, qui a bien .III[M]. milles de tour. Le roy de ceste
isle a .VII. Rois, tous sous luy couronnez.
Ceste ysle est moult habitee, et est la seconde
meilleur qui soit en tout le monde. On y [5]
treuve les cloz de gerofle, les cubebes, nois muscades et
pluiseurs autres espices qui y croissent et toutes
menneres de vivres en tres grant habondance fors de vin.
Le roy de ceste ysle demeure en un merveilleux
palais et tres grant. Les degrez sont telement fait que [10]
l’un pas est d’argent et l’autre d’or. Du pavement l’un
quarrel est d’or et l’autre d’argent. Les murs sont
couvers de platines d’or et sont en ses parois entaillez
hommes a cheval tout a fin or. Ces chevaliers ont
entour leurs chiefz cercles d’or, comme nous faisons [15]
dyademez aus sains, et cest diademez de ses chevaliers
sont tous plains de pierres precieuses. Les couvertures
des maisons de celui palais sont toutes d’or pur, et
briefment c’est le plus riche palais et le plus bel qui soit
en tout le monde. [20]
Le Grant Caan de Cathay, qui est le souverain
empereur de tous les Tartres, a souvent meut guerre a
celui roy et souvent s’est a lui assamblez a bataille, mais
celui roy le a tousjours desconffit.

‘Of the island of Jana, where the palace is of gold and silver.

‘Near that realm is an island which is called Jana, which is a good three thousand miles around. The king of this island has under him seven crowned kings. This island is very populous, and is the second best of all islands that be on Earth. One finds there cloves, cubebs, nutmegs, and many other precious spices that they grind there, and all manner of necessities in great quantity except for wine.

‘The king of this island lives in a marvellous and very large palace. Its steps are of gold and silver alternately. The paving tiles are [likewise] one gold and the next silver. The walls are covered with plates of gold, and there are mounted men sculpted out of gold on them. These knights have golden circles round their heads, like the diadems we make for [the figures of] saints, and these circles are full of precious stones. The roofs of the houses of this palace are all of pure gold, and [to put it] briefly, this is the richest and loveliest palace that there be in the whole world.

‘The Great Khan of Cathay, who is the sovereign emperor of all the Tatars, has often made war with this king and often brought battle to him, but this king has always defeated him.’

A. J. West — Leiden, 2022 (posted here 2024).

References

Odoric de Pordenone. 2010. Le Voyage en Asia d’Odoric de Pordenone, traduit par Jean de Long OSB Iteneraire de la Peregrinacion et du Voyaige (1351). Alvise Andreose and Philippe Ménard (eds). Geneva: Droz.

Odorico da Pordenone. 2016. Relatio de mirabilibus orientalium Tatarorum. Edizione critica a cura di Annalia Marchisio. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo.