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Giovanni de' Marignolli: An Italian Prelate at the Court of the South-East Asian Queen of Sheba

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Brian E. Colless
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Extract

The year 1338 was the occasion of a great event in the life of a certain John of Florence, for in December of that year he set out from Avignon on a journey that was to take him, in his capacity of Papal Legate, to the court of the Great Khan of Cathay in Peking. This Franciscan Friar of aristocratic Florentine lineage is best known to us under the name John Marignolli, sometimes Giovanni de' Marignola, and his importance for the history of South-East Asia lies in the fact that, like Marco Polo, he made his return voyage from China not by the Central Asian overland route again but by sea through the Indies and, what is more, though passing through many perils, survived to tell the tale.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , September 1968 , pp. 325 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1968

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References

1. Beazley, C. R., The Dawn of Modern Geography, 3 Vols., 1906, III, 288–309Google Scholar; Yule, H., Cathay and the Way Thither, 4 Vols., 2nd Ed. revised by H. Cordier, London, The Hakluyt Society, 1913–1916, III, 177–269.Google Scholar

2. Beazley, , op. cit., III, 297–301Google Scholar; Yule, , op. cit., III, 191–196.Google Scholar

3. Yule, , op. cit., III, 191.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 194, n. 1.

5. Latin text (non vidi! except for the significant portions cited in footnotes by Beazley) in the Fontes Rerum Bohemicarum 1882), III, 492–604Google Scholar; van den Wyngaert, A., Sinica Franciscana, 531.Google Scholar

6. Yule, , op. cit., IV, 103–108, 157–160Google Scholar for Ibn Battutah; and for Nikitin, III. 194, as well as Major, R. H., Ed., India in the Fifteenth Century, Hak. Soc., 1857 Part 3, 20–22.Google Scholar

7. Braddell, R., “A Note on Sambas and Borneo”, JMBRAS, XXII, 4, 1949, 1–15Google Scholar, Cf. XX, 2, 1947, 7–18 and XIX, 1, 1941, 32–43. Perhaps he suggests, some Arab traders from S. Arabian Saba settled in the Celebes and married into the royal family.

8. Jack-Hinton, C., “Marco Polo in South-East Asia”, JSEAH, 5, 2, 43–103.Google Scholar

9. Yule, , op. cit., II, 153.Google Scholar

10. The Travels of Ludovico di Varthema, Hak. Soc., 1863, Transl. J. W. Jones, 248.Google Scholar

11. Schrieke, B., Indonesian Sociological Studies, II, 1957, 84.Google Scholar

12. See Yule, 's discussion (III, 195f.)Google Scholar concerning Marco Polo's astronomical observations about Sumatra as compared with Marignolli's.

13. Beazley, , op, cit., III, 300.Google Scholar

14. Hall, D. G. E., A History of South-East Asia, 2nd Ed., 1964, 209.Google Scholar

15. Yule gives two obscure account of instances of queens in Java, culled from Raffles, ' History of JavaGoogle Scholar, which may be ignored here. We should, however, add C. C. Berg's statement, which needs to be read in its context, that “Tribhuwananottunggadewi may have been the only queen of Javanese history”, p. 109 of “The Javanese Picture of the Past” in Soedjatmoko, et al. , An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography, N.Y., 1964, 87–117Google Scholar.

At the same time we can cite the high veneration accorded to the Rajapatni (d. 1350), who was elevated to the rank of divine patroness at a posthumous ceremony in 1362, as described in Pigeaud, Th., Java in the Fourteenth Century, The Hague, 1960–1963, IV, 169–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

According to B. Schrieke's reconstruction (II, 22–27), after King Jayanagara's violent death the Rajapatni took the power into her own hands for a time (1328–9) but then passed on the executive function to her elder daughter Bhre Kahuripan (= Tribhuwana, Jawawisnuwardhani) who ruled as queen till Hayam Wuruk reached his majority (b. 1334) in the year of the Rajapatni's death (1350). Schrieke states (p. 27) that Tribhuwana died c. 1371. Of course, it must not be forgotten that the person who held the empire together from 1331 to 1364 was the prime minister Gajah Mada. Finally, cf. the appended note, Yule, III, 194Google Scholar, “Female rule in a state of the South Seas (1349) is confirmed in the Ta yi chi Ho.”

16. Yule, , II, 153–5.Google Scholar

17. Pigeaud, , IV, 499f.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., II, 108.

19. Ibid., IV, 519.

20. Ibid., IV, 520. Cf. Varthema's praise of the capabilities of elephants in India (op. cit., 126–9)Google Scholar. He mentions elephants in Malacca (225) and Sumatra (232) where they seemed to be particularly large, but not in Java; but his stay there lasted only 14 days and apparently did not include a visit to any royal city.

21. Ibid., IV, 506–509.

22. “Post fructum animarum, sum enim ibi pauci Christiani”; cited by Beazley, , op. cit., III, 300.Google Scholar

23. On the spread of Nestorian Christianity from Persia to the Far East see Dauvillier, J., “Les provinces chaldéennes de l'extérieur au Moyen Age”, Mélanges Cavallera, Toulouse, 1948, 260–316.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 314f. Dauvillier identifies Marignolli's Saba with Dābhagh.

25. Regarding foreign communities in the Archipelago see Tibbetts, G. R., “Early Muslim Traders in South East Asia”, JMBRAS, 30, 1, 1957, 1–45Google Scholar; for Majapahit see Pigeaud, , IV, 27, 37, 500–504Google Scholar. The present writer is preparing a study of the evidence that places Persian Christian merchants and missionaries in Kalah on the Malay Peninsula by 650, which will supplement the material presented by Wolters, O. W. in Early Indonesian Commerce, Ithaca, 1967.Google Scholar

26. Hakluyt Society, 1944, II, 268Google Scholar. Varthema passed through in 1506 in the company of “Armenian” Christians from Sarnau in Siam but did not mention any Christian communities in Java.

27. Dauvillier, , op. cit., 315.Google Scholar

28. Yule, , op. cit., III, 267, n.lGoogle Scholar. Notice in passing that the 9th century Muslim topographer and postmaster Ibn Khurdādhbih speaks of an Indonesian island named Bartayil from which musical sounds issue at night and which is reputed to be the abode of Antichrist (Dajjāl). Some scholars have identified this with Bali. Tibbetts, , JMBRAS, 30, 1, 16Google Scholar. See Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam, s. v. Dadjdjal and Ilyas.

29. Op. cit., IV, 243f; I, 120.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., IV, 396. Penanggungan is the nearest mountain to Majapahit and tombs and monuments from that period are found there. See further Wales, G. Quaritch, The Making of Greater India, 2nd Ed., London, 1961, 138–158.Google Scholar

31. Schrieke, , op. cit., IIGoogle Scholar, “The Ruler as the Restorer of Unity”, 76–95Google Scholar. Pigeaud has shown (in India Antiqua) that Erucakra is a corruption of Vairocana.

32. Bishop, E. F. F., “Some reflections on Justin Martyr and the Nativity Narratives”, Evangelical Quarterly, XXXIX, 1967, 30–39.Google Scholar

33. Saeki, P. Y., The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, 2nd Ed., 1951, 55.Google Scholar

34. Yule, H., The Book of Ser Marco Polo, 3rd Ed., 1926, I, 78–83.Google Scholar

35. Yule, , Cathay, II, 106fGoogle Scholar. Note also that Yule's text of Marco Polo says that the three kings came respectively from Saba, Ava, and Cala Ataperistan, whereas the Paris MS (F) followed in the translation of R. Latham, The Travels of Marco Polo, Penguin Classics, 1958, 29, reads “one of the three Magi came from Saveh, one from Hawah, and the third from Kashan”. The reading Kashan chimes in with Odoric's Cassan.

36. I owe this information to Dr. John Bowman (Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Univ. of Melbourne), who has made a close study of the Persian Diatessaron. I have now also found a study that covers all these points: Olschki, L., “The Wise Men of the East in Oriental Traditions”, Univ. of California Publ. in Semitic Philology, XI, 1951, 375–395Google Scholar, where reference is made to the work of Messina, G., including Notizia su un Diatessaron persiano tradotto dal Siriaco, Rome, 1943Google Scholar, and Cristianesimo Buddhismo, Manicheismo nell' Asia Antica, Rome, 1947, 103f.Google Scholar, as well as the two studies mentioned in the next note. More information on tht Syriac traditions, including the names of the “Kings” (sometimes 12 in number instead of the customary 3) can be found in The Book of the Cave of Treasures, transl. Budge, E. A. W., London, 1927.Google Scholar

37. Bishop, , op. cit., 32Google Scholar, says that in this apocryphal Gospel Persia is taken for granted as the home of the Magi because Zoroaster was supposed to have predicted it all. See further Messina, G., I Magi a Betlemme e un profezia di Zoroastro, Rome, 1933Google Scholar, and “Una profezia di Zoroastro sulla venuta del Messia”, Biblica, XIV, 1933, 170.Google Scholar

38. Hall, , op. cit., 261Google Scholar; Schriekt, , op. cit., II, 154Google Scholar, says that Wirasaba (to be identified with Jombang) was already known in the Majapahit period and is mentioned repeatedly in the Middle Javanese kidungs as well as Dutch administrative records.

39. By the same token the Shabat of Nikitin the Russian (c. 1470) might be Java and his Shabait (used interchangeably) might be Majapahit. See above at n. 6.