JORDANUS ( JORDAN CATALANI) (fl. 1321-1330), French Dominican missionary and explorer in Asia, was born at Severac in Aveyron, north-east of Toulouse. In 1302 he accompanied Thomas of Tolentino, via Negropont, to the East ; in 1321 he was in western India, in the company of the same Thomas and cer tain other Franciscan missionaries on their way to China. Ill luck detained them at Tana in Salsette island, near Bombay; and here Jordanus' companions ("the four martyrs of Tana") fell victims to Muslim fanaticism (April 7, 1321) . Jordanus, escaping, worked some time at Baruch in Gujarat, near the Nerbudda estuary, and at Suali, near Surat. The Epistles of Jordanus, like the contemporary Secreta of Marino Sanuto (1306-1321), urge the pope to establish a Christian fleet upon the Indian seas. Jordanus, between 1324 and 1328 (if not earlier), probably visited Kulam and selected it as the best centre for his future work.
He probably revisited Europe about 1328, passing through Persia, and perhaps touching at the great Crimean port of Soldaia or Sudak. He was appointed a bishop in 1328 and nominated by Pope John XXII. to the see of Columbum in 1330. Together with the new bishop of Samarkand, Thomas of Mancasola, Jordanus was commissioned to take the pall to John de Cora, archbishop of Sultaniyah in Persia, within whose province Kulam was reck oned ; he was also commended to the Christians of south India by Pope John. Either before going out to Malabar as bishop, or
during a later visit to the west, Jordanus wrote his Mirabilia, which from internal evidence can only be fixed within the period 1329-1338; in this work he furnished the best account of Indian regions, products, climate, manners, customs, fauna and flora given by any European in the Middle Ages. We have no more knowledge of Jordanus after April 8, 1330.
Of Jordanus' Epistles there is only one MS., viz. Paris, National Library, 5006 Lat., fol. 182, r. and v.; of the Mirabilia also one MS. only, viz., London, British Museum, Additional MSS., 19,513, fols. 3, 1.—I2 r. The text of the Epistles is in Quetif and Echard, Scrip tores ordinis praedicatorum, i. 549-550 (Epistle I.) ; and in Wadding, Annales minorum, vi. 359-361 (Epistle II.) ; the text of the Mirabilia in the Paris Geog. Soc.'s Recueil de voyages, iv. 1-68 (1839). The Papal letters referring to Jordanus are in Raynaldus, Annales eccle siastici, 1330, §§ lv. and lvii. (April 8; Feb. See also Sir H. Yule's Jordanus, a version of the Mirabilia with a commentary (Hakluyt Soc., 1863) and the same editor's Cathay, giving a version of the Epistles, with a commentary, etc. (Hak. Soc., 1866).