John of Montecorvino

John of Montecorvino or Giovanni da Montecorvino in Italian (1247–1328) was an Italian Franciscan missionary, traveller and statesman, founder of the earliest Roman Catholic missions in India and China, and archbishop of Peking, and Latin Patriarch of the Orient.

John was born at Montecorvino Rovella, in what is now Campania.

As a member of a Roman Catholic religious order which at that time was chiefly concerned with the conversion of non-Catholics, he was commissioned in 1272 by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos to Pope Gregory X, to negotiate for the reunion of the 'Greek' (Orthodox) and Latin churches.

Commissioned by Pope Nicholas IV to preach Christianity in the Nearer and Middle East, especially to the Asiatic hordes then threatening the West, he devoted himself incessantly from 1275 to 1289 to the Eastern missions, first that of Persia. In 1286 Arghun, the Ilkhan who ruled this kingdom, sent a request to the pope through the Nestorian monk, Rabban Bar Sauma, to send Catholic missionaries to the Court of the Great Khan (Mongol emperor) of China, Kúblaí Khan (1260–94), who was well disposed towards Christianity. Arnold of Cologne time John of Montecorvino came to Rome with similar promising news, and Pope Nicholas entrusted him with the important mission to Farther China, where about this time Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian lay traveller, still lingered.

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