Giovanni Da Pian Del Carpine - Life Before The Journey

Life Before The Journey

He appears to have been a native of Umbria, in modern-day Italy, where a place formerly called Pian del Carpine, but now Magione, stands near Perugia, on the road to Cortona. He was one of the companions and disciples of his countryman Saint Francis of Assisi, and from sundry indications can hardly have been younger than the latter. Joannes bore a high repute in the Franciscan order, and took a foremost part in the propagation of its teaching in northern Europe, holding successively the offices of warden (custos) in Saxony, and of provincial (minister) of Germany, and afterwards of Spain, perhaps of Barbary, and of Cologne.

He was in the last post at the time of the great Mongol invasion of eastern Europe and of the disastrous Battle of Legnica (9 April 1241), which threatened to cast European Christendom under the leadership of the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Ögedei Khan. The dread of the Tatars was, however, still on people's mind four years later, when Pope Innocent IV dispatched the first formal Catholic mission to the Mongols, partly to protest against the latter's invasion of Christian lands, partly to gain trustworthy information regarding Mongol armies and their purposes. Behind these there may have lurked the beginnings of a policy much developed later—of opening diplomatic intercourse with a power whose alliance might be valuable against Islam.