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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Benedictus Polonus

Franciscan missionary (ca. 1245)

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Benedictus Polonus, a medieval Friar Minor missionary and traveller (c. 1245) companion of Giovanni da Piancarpino, and author of the brief chronicle “De Itinere Fratrum Minorum ad Tar-taros”, concerning the first Franciscan missions to the Tatars. This work was unknown apparently to Wadding and Sbaralea, the literary historians of the order. It was first published by D’Avezac in the “Recueil de Voyages” (Paris, 1839, IV, 774-779). Cf. the “Chronicle” of Glassberger in “Analecta Franciscana” (II, 71). The report of Benedictus is important for the curious letter of the Great Khan to Innocent IV.

THOMAS J. SHAHAN


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