1182-1252

Italian Explorer

Long before Marco Polo (1254-1324), there was Giovanni da Pian del Carpini, an Italian priest sent by Pope Innocent IV on the first European mission to the court of the Mongol's Great Khan. Two years before Polo was born, Carpini returned from a journey that had taken him to many of the same far eastern territories later visited by the Venetian adventurer.

Born in the village of Pian del Carpini near Perugia in Tuscany, Carpini was the same age as St. Francis of Assisi, and when the latter formed the Franciscan order of monks in 1209, Carpini became one of its first members. He later served on Franciscan missions that took him all over Europe: to Germany, Spain, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Hungary, Poland, and Scandinavia. By the age of 63, he had become exceedingly obese, which made...