Fidentius of Padua

Fidentius of Padua (Italian: Fidenzio da Padova) was a Franciscan administrator and writer active in the Holy Land between 1266 and 1291.

In June 1266, he was made vicar provincial of the Holy Land, an office restricted by the Franciscan rule to those at least forty years old.

[1] That same year, acting on the request of the Templar grand master Thomas Bérard, he sent two friars to the besieged castle of Safad to serve as chaplains.

He attended the Second Council of Lyon and at the first session on 7 May was commissioned by Pope Gregory X to write a report on recovering lost territory in the Holy Land.

It was only in 1290 or 1291, shortly before the fall of Acre, that he delivered his report, Liber recuperationis Terre Sancte, to Pope Nicholas IV.

[4] The Liber recuperationis Terre Sancte—or On the Recovery of the Holy Land—survives in a single parchment manuscript of the 14th century, now in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Lat.

The first six sections are the first part and cover the history of the Holy Land under the Gentiles, Jews, Assyrians, Romans, Greeks and Saracens.

[1] His history of Islam bears a resemblance to William of Tripoli's De statu sarracenorum, which was drawn up for the occasion of the Second Council of Lyon.

[10] He records that Muḥammad effectively created the Islamic religion out of what he learned from a Nestorian Christian monk named Sergius and three Jews of Mecca.

[4] He did know Arabic, and quotes from the Qurʾān to describe the seven vices he attributes to Muslims: infidelity, lewdness, cruelty, greed, overconfidence, foolishness and volatility.

He describes seven routes from western Europe to the Holy Land, pointing out the location of enemy fortresses, the potential allies along the way and the logistical difficulties unique to each.

An army would move overland following the same route as the First Crusaders, joining up with the Cilician Armenians, Georgians and Mongols, while a fleet would be operating out of some eastern Mediterranean port.

[1] Fidentius includes some chapters on the topography of the Holy Land, especially of its cities, which would be important for planning the defence and maintenance of the conquests.

If the spice trade were deflected from the Red Sea to Mongol Persia, Egypt would be deprived of customs duties and would also lose export markets because of the reduction in shipping.