Friar Odoric

Blesed Odoric of Pordenone
The departure of Odoric
Born	1286 Pordenone, Patriarchate of Aquileia, Holy Roman Empire
Died	January 14, 1331(1331-01-14) Udine, Patriarchate of Aquileia, Holy Roman Empire
Venerated in	Roman Catholicism (Franciscan Order)
Beatified	1755 by Pope Benedict XIV
Major shrine	Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Udine, Italy
Feast	January 14

Odoric of Pordenone, OFM (1286–1331), also known as Odorico Mattiussi or Mattiuzzi, was an Italian late-medieval Franciscan friar and missionary explorer. His account of his visit to China was an important source for the account of John Mandeville. Many of the incredible reports in Mandeville have proven to be garbled versions of Odoric's eyewitness descriptions.

Odoric was born at Villanova, a hamlet now belonging to the town of Pordenone in Friuli, in or about 1286. He came from the Italian family of the Mattiussi, one of the families in charge of defending the town of Pordenone in the name of Ottokar II, King of Bohemia. This later gave rise to the unsubstantiated rumours that the family was of Bohemian origin. According to the ecclesiastical biographers, in early years he took the vows of the Franciscan order and joined their convent at Udine, the capital of Friuli. In 1296 Odoric went as a missionary to the Balkans, and then to the Mongols in southern Russia.

Friar Odoric was dispatched to the East in April 1318. Starting from Padua, he went to Constantinople via Venice and then crossed the Black Sea to Trebizond. From there he traveled and preached in Armenia, Media, and Persia. In all these countries the Franciscans had founded mission centers. From Sultanieh he proceeded by Kashan and Yazd, and turning thence followed a somewhat indirect route by Persepolis and the Shiraz and Baghdad regions, to the Persian Gulf. With another friar, James of Ireland, as his companion, he sailed from Ormus to India, landing at Thane, near Mumbai.