The Travels of Friar Odoric

Today’s task: The Travels of Friar Odoric (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002)

Let me start by saying that while I love buying books online, I need to start looking more closely at the editions I order. This one starts with a bit of bible-thumping as some publisher out of Grand Rapids reclaims Odoric for the modern missionary. Okay, it’s not so bad, but the framework this particular book provides for Odoric’s writing pirouettes on my very last nerve. It has a beautiful dust jacket, a pleasant typeface and a reassuring weight to the paper, though, so in the end, all is well.

Quick recap: who is Friar Odoric? A Franciscan monk from northeastern Italy who traveled throughout Asia in the early fourteenth century (I believe through present-day Iran, India, Indonesia, China, Nepal and Russia).

I have totally loved Odoric since we read his journal in 515. There’s no bullshit with Odoric. He’s descriptive and even poetic at times, but always in measured doses, and generally you sense you’re receiving his impressions unaltered by any thought of artistry or politics. If this makes sense, what impresses me about Odoric is how he confidently shuns any need or desire to impress. In short, he’s the sort of traveler I aspire to be: he lets the places and people he encounters largely speak for themselves, and speak how they will to whatever audience they find – but he doesn’t shame himself from indulging in description of the crazy shit he comes across, either. Good man.

Some points that cross with Mandeville:
-Odoric gives prices for trade items like dates and ginger, which Mandeville largely avoids in the versions I’ve read
-Odoric mentions the Dry Tree in passing (though Mandeville describes it at length), and passes over the Tartary Lamb in a passage that seems a bit truncated to me
-The discussion of bamboo, its uses and its properties is very similar to my versions of Mandeville
-The trees bearing honey, flour, poison and wine are in both Odoric and Mandeville, and change very little between the two


I am intrigued by the following passage that occurs early in Odoric’s journal:
“Of all I purpose not to speak, though I shall be the first to tell of many which will seem to a number of people past belief” (64).

I feel like this is close to a statement made by Mandeville in at least one version, but as I don’t have Mandeville with me here in Koeye (for shame!) I’ll have to check up on this later.


For the future, I have a question: what the hell are lignum aloes? I keep coming across references to them and have yet to find a satisfactory explanation. I'll push on this a little harder when I have a stabler internet connection.


For now, here is an index of botanical references in my edition of Odoric:
Agriculture -- 131
Apple -- 163
Bamboo -- 109
Barrenness -- 75
Cotton -- 131
Dates -- 75
Fertility -- 155
Flower -- 78
Forest -- 144
Fruit -- 67, 106
Ginger -- 98, 121
Green Mount -- 136
Lemon -- 115
Lignum aloe -- 105, 141
Pasture -- 93
Pepper -- 94, 96
Rhubarb -- 151
Rice -- 105, 106, 120, 128, 154
Shrubbery -- 129
Spices -- 107
Sugar -- 123
Thicket -- 136
Tree -- (Dry Tree) 68; (instrument of martyrdom) 88; (pleasant) 129; (tree of flour) 108; (tree of honey) 108; (tree of poison) 108; (tree of wine) 108; (tree worship) 77, 78
Vegetable lamb -- 148
Wheat -- 105
Wine -- 67, 77, 78, 100, 107, 120, 128, 134, 148