[ODORICO MATIUZZI] VENNI, GIUSEPPE: - Elogio storico alle gesta del Beato Odorico dell'ordine de minori conventuali con la storia da lui dettata de' suoi viaggi asiatici illustrata da un religioso dell' ordine stesso e presentata a gli amatori delle antichitâ. Venezia, Antonio Zatta, 1761.

. Large 4to ( 32.5 x 24 cm). Pp. viii, 152, printed on high-quality paper. With folding engraved frontispiece depicting a scene in which Blessed Odorico performs baptism, engraved vignette on title, one large folding engraved map dated Venizia 1760, one engraved plate and one genealogical table. Uncut copy with wide margins. Contemporary unsophisticated rustic paper boards, with some minor staining. Scarce work of Odorico's journey to the Far East 1318-30. It is alternatively attributed to Giuseppe Venni and to Fr. Benofi. Some minor staining at beginning and end but still a magnificent copy. Odorico Matiuzzi or Odoric of Pordenone (1286-1331) was a Franciscan missionary who travelled to Asia shortly after Marco Polo. In 1318 he started out from Padua, travelled to Constantinople and continued via Armenia, Media and Persia to India. He was the first European to reach Indonesia and finally arrived in China where he spent three years in Khanbaliq (Beijing). He mentions Hangzhou as "greater city than any other in the world, being 100 miles around, with everywhere within inhabited; often a house has 10 or 12 families. The city has twelve gates and at each gate at about eight miles are cities larger than Venice or Padua". Upon his return to Italy in 1329, he wrote a chronicle of his travels and called it the "itinerarium" which contains 73 known manuscripts written in Latin, French and Italian. They include accurate descriptions of Asian social and religious customs. After his death, he became an object of popular devotion and was beatified in 1755. Odorico's narrative was first printed at Pesaro in 1513 by Ponticus Viranius "Odorichus de rebus incognitis" in what Apostolo Zeno (1668-1750) calls lingua inculta e rozza (uncultivated and crude language). Odoric's work was an important source for the account of John Mandeville (first 1480). "Cette édition de Venni est une des meilleures d'Odoric" (Cordier). Cordier BS 2012. See Melzi I, 353. See Löwendahl 2 (Mandeville) and 45 (Ramusio). This edition not in Löwendahl.

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