Katarina Vilioni (died 1342) was an Italian woman and one of the first Europeans known to have resided in China. She was a member of an Italian, likely Venetian or perhaps Genoese trading family that lived in Yangzhou during the mid-14th century. [1]
Vilioni is known through her tombstone, which was rediscovered at Yangzhou in 1951. It suggests that Vilioni died in 1342 and was the daughter of a man named Domenico Vilioni.
The early presence of Europeans at Yangzhou may have been linked to the silk trade and a reported sojourn there, during the 1280s, by Marco Polo, who was said to have served the Chinese emperor in an official position at Yangzhou.
Members of the Franciscan order were apparently established at Yangzhou before 1322, when Odoric de Pordenone visited and resided among Franciscans there. [2]
The existence of the tombstone suggests that, by the time Vilioni died, there was a well-established community originating from the Italian peninsula in the city. [3]
The tombstone, which is inscribed in an upper-case Lombardic Latin script, reads:
In nomine D[omi]ni amen hic jacet
Katerina filia q[u]ondam Domini
D[omi]nici de Vilionis que obiit in
anno Domini mileximo [lower-alpha 1] CCC
XXXX II de mense Junii("In the name of the Lord, amen. Here lies Caterina daughter of the deceased lord Domenico de Vilionis, who died in A.D. 1342, in the month of June.")
Vilioni's tombstone also carries a depiction of the martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. As such, it may represent the oldest surviving Roman Catholic artefact in China. (Older Christian monuments in China are the work of the Nestorian Church of the East. Odoric de Pordenone also mentions the existence, in 1322, of three Nestorian churches in Yangzhou.)
The tombstone was rediscovered in 1951 by members of the People's Liberation Army, among material that had been used to build ramparts at Yangzhou.
The Vilioni family of Yangzhou has been linked to a named Pietro Vilioni, who in 1264 was involved in trade at Tabriz (in modern Iran). [4]
Following the rediscovery of Katarina Vilioni's tombstone, a smaller plaque was discovered in Yangzhou, with an inscription mentioning the death in November 1344 of an Antonio Vilioni, who was also a son of Domenico Vilioni.
The surname Vilioni may have been a precursor or variant of the later surname Ilioni, although this is only a hypothesis. The medieval historian Robert Lopez has suggested that the Domenico Vilioni of Yangzhou was a man named "Domenico Ilioni", who in 1348 was mentioned in records kept by the city of Genoa. The Genoese records state that Domenico Ilioni mentioned in relation to a merchant named Jacopo de Oliverio, who was said to have lived in the "Kingdom of Cathay" (China), where he had multiplied his capital fivefold. [2]
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo, a book that described the then-mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan, and other Asian societies.
Year 1275 (MCCLXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.
Prester John was a legendary Christian patriarch, presbyter, and king. Stories popular in Europe in the 12th to the 17th centuries told of a Nestorian patriarch and king who was said to rule over a Christian nation lost amid the pagans and Muslims in the Orient. The accounts were often embellished with various tropes of medieval popular fantasy, depicting Prester John as a descendant of the Three Magi, ruling a kingdom full of riches, marvels, and strange creatures.
The Šubić family, also known initially as Bribirščić, was one of the Twelve noble tribes of Croatia and a great noble house which constituted Croatian statehood in the Middle Ages. They held the county of Bribir (Varvaria) in inland Dalmatia. They with their prominent branch Zrinski (1347–1703) were arguably the leading noble family of Croatia for almost 500 years.
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, with an area of 11,245 square kilometers (4,342 sq mi) and a population of 8,782,285 as of the 2020 census. Its built-up area is home to 6,669,711 inhabitants, encompassing the Licheng, Fengze, and Luojiang urban districts; Jinjiang, Nan'an, and Shishi cities; Hui'an County; and the Quanzhou District for Taiwanese Investment. Quanzhou was China's 12th-largest extended metropolitan area in 2010.
Book of the Marvels of the World, in English commonly called The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Italian explorer Marco Polo. It describes Polo's travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295, and his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan.
Yangzhou is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province, East China. Sitting on the north bank of the Yangtze, it borders the provincial capital Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Taizhou to the east, and Zhenjiang across the river to the south. Its population was 4,559,797 at the 2020 census and its urban area is home to 2,635,435 inhabitants, including three urban districts, currently in the agglomeration.
Rabban Bar Ṣawma, also known as Rabban Ṣawma or Rabban Çauma, was a Uyghur or Ongud monk turned diplomat of the "Nestorian" Church of the East in China. He is known for embarking on a pilgrimage from Yuan China to Jerusalem with one of his students, Markos. Due to military unrest along the way, they never reached their destination, but instead spent many years in Ilkhanate-controlled Baghdad.
Odoric of Pordenone was a Franciscan friar and missionary explorer from Friuli in northeast Italy. He journeyed through India, Sumatra, Java, and China, where he spent three years in the imperial capital of Khanbaliq. After more than ten years of travel, he returned home and dictated a narrative of his experiences and observations called the Relatio, highlighting various cultural, religious, and social peculiarities he encountered in Asia.
The Catholic Church first appeared in China upon the arrival of John of Montecorvino in China proper during the Yuan dynasty; he was the first Catholic missionary in the country, and would become the first bishop of Khanbaliq (1271–1368).
The Church of the East was a Christian organization with a presence in China during two periods: first from the 7th through the 10th century in the Tang dynasty, when it was known as Jingjiao, and later during the Yuan dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, when it was described alongside other foreign religions like Catholicism and possibly Manichaeism as Yelikewen jiao.
The Diocese of Quilon is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church based in the southern Indian city of Kollam. It is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Trivandrum. The Diocese of Quilon covers an area of 1,950 km2 that contains a population of some 4.8 million. At least 4.8% of the people in the area are Catholic.
John of Montecorvino or Giovanni da Montecorvino in Italian was an Italian Franciscan missionary, traveller and statesman, founder of the earliest Latin Catholic missions in India and China, and archbishop of Peking. He converted many people during his missionary work and established several churches in Yuan dynasty-held Beijing. John of Montecorvino wrote a letter intending to convert the Great Khan to Catholicism. He was a contemporary of Marco Polo.
This is a chronology of the early European exploration of Asia.
In modern times the Mongols are primarily Tibetan Buddhists, but in previous eras, especially during the time of the Mongol empire, they were primarily shamanist, and had a substantial minority of Christians, many of whom were in positions of considerable power. Overall, Mongols were highly tolerant of most religions, and typically sponsored several at the same time. Many Mongols had been proselytized by the Church of the East since about the seventh century, and some tribes' primary religion was Christian. In the time of Genghis Khan, his sons took Christian wives of the Keraites, and under the rule of Genghis Khan's grandson, Möngke Khan, the primary religious influence was Christian.
Christianity in Asia has its roots in the very inception of Christianity, which originated from the life and teachings of Jesus in 1st-century Roman Judea. Christianity then spread through the missionary work of his apostles, first in the Levant and taking roots in the major cities such as Jerusalem and Antioch. According to tradition, further eastward expansion occurred via the preaching of Thomas the Apostle, who established Christianity in the Parthian Empire (Iran) and India. The very First Ecumenical Council was held in the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor (325). The first nations to adopt Christianity as a state religion were Armenia in 301 and Georgia in 327. By the 4th century, Christianity became the dominant religion in all Asian provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Given textual and archaeological evidence, it is thought that thousands of Europeans lived in Imperial China during the Yuan dynasty. These were people from countries traditionally belonging to the lands of Christendom during the High to Late Middle Ages who visited, traded, performed Christian missionary work, or lived in China. This occurred primarily during the second half of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century, coinciding with the rule of the Mongol Empire, which ruled over a large part of Eurasia and connected Europe with their Chinese dominion of the Yuan dynasty. Whereas the Byzantine Empire centered in Greece and Anatolia maintained rare incidences of correspondence with the Tang, Song and Ming dynasties of China, the Holy See sent several missionaries and embassies to the early Mongol Empire as well as to Khanbaliq, the capital of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. These contacts with the West were preceded by rare interactions between the Han dynasty and Hellenistic Greeks and Romans.
Symon Semeonis was a 14th-century Irish Franciscan friar and author.
Andin. Armenian Journey Chronicles is an epic documentary directed by Ruben Giney. The film centers on historical links between Armenians travelling to India, China, and other countries on the Silk Road.
Phoenix Mosque is a mosque in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is known for being one of the four great mosques of China. It is also one of the earliest mosque built in China. The origin of this mosque dates back to the Tang or Song dynasty.