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Abstract Thanks to the great influence exerted by the Yuan Dynasty, its capital city Dayidu evolved into the most famous international metropolis of the 13th-14th Centuries and the center of writings in that era. There were a great number of splendid descriptions of Dayidu in classic travel notes such as The Travels of Marco Polo and The Travels of Ibn Ba?ū?ah. Giovanni da Montecorvino, the first Catholic Christian sent by the Holy See for missionary work in the Yuan Dynasty at the end of the 13th Century, described what he did in Dayidu and put forward his personal reflections on it in his letters to the Pope. Compared with the other travel notes of that time, in these letters he made no vivid description of Dayidu but presented a picture of its multicultural encounters and blending of the 13th-14th Centuries in a more cautious and reliable way, from which more prominent authenticity and reality can be sensed. Different from reports written by missionaries such as Plano Carpini and Guillaume de Rubru-quis in the early 13th Century and focusing on the Mongolian Empire which was engaged in expeditions and invasions, Giovanni da Montecorvino’s letters portrayed the Yuan Dynasty when the situation of borders and diplomacy was generally stable since he arrived in Dayidu at the end of the 13th Century.
From Giovanni da Montecorvino’s trip to China, we can find that Dayidu as a global central city of that time was very attractive to people all over the world. Concerning the writings of the 13th-14th Centuries, apart from the official Chinese texts and a large number of Dayidu-centered writings by Chinese scholars such as Nian Xia Qu(《辇下曲》) and Xi Jin Zhi（《析津志》）, Dayidu was recorded and praised by people from different countries, including Giovanni da Montecorvino, Korean scholars from the Korean Peninsula, Venetian merchants across the Mediterranean and Tangier Muslims from the Strait of Gibraltar. In either “Yan Travel Records”(《燕行录》) by Korean scholars or “Journey to the East”(《东游记》) by Western missionaries and travelers is concerned, we can see that Dayidu was a combination of oriental culture and the world image.
The study of Giovanni da Montecorvino’s letters tells us that Dayidu is characterized by its cosmopolitan features. On the one hand, the friendly treatment Giovanni da Montecorvino received from the Great Khan as well as his conflict and mediation with Nestorianism shows that different religious sects stayed active in Dayidu and this city was tolerant of global plurality and enjoyed peace among different religious groups. On the other hand, the development of Catholicism in Dayidu, presided over by Giovanni da Montecorvino, reflects the cosmopolitan features of Dayidu from the imperial court to the common people, which were described in a large quantity and great details in the Chinese texts of that time.
Giovanni da Montecorvino, who spent most of his life in Dayidu until his death in 1328, was proficient in Mongolian and translated The New Testament and prayers into Mongolian. In the meantime, he conducted services in his Catholic church with Latin rituals and recited The Bible and Genesis in the local language of Dayidu. Although his acquisition of Mongolian language and sutra translation only reveals a very tiny part of the mutual blending of different cultures in Dayidu, it is a good showcase for the harmony and vitality of the intellectual system in the 13th-14th Centuries. In Dayidu, the spread of the Korean fashion and the popularity of Tibetan dances impressed people with flexibility and vitality of cultural exchanges and infiltration in this city.
In conclusion, this paper points out that since the capital city is “the key to national customs”, the Yuan government maintained a good relationship between big counties and small towns and the central leaders by means of efficient management and construction of courier stations and roads. The cosmopolitan features of Dayidu were transmitted even to remote areas influenced by the Yuan Empire through land and water transportation networks, from which we can see that the overall Chinese image of the 13th-14th Centuries was full of vitality since it was closely linked with the entire world.
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Published: 15 April 2022
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