After more than ten years of travel, he returned home and dictated a narrative of his experiences and observations called the Relatio, highlighting various cultural, religious, and social peculiarities he encountered in Asia.

His manuscript was copied multiple times and distributed widely across Europe, both in the original Latin and several vernacular translations including Italian, French, and German.

One tradition says that he was the son of a soldier fighting for Ottokar II of Bohemia, who seized control of Pordenone in the early 1270s.

Another tradition says that Odoric was the son of a prominent local family but recent historians tend to discount this version.

[3][4] Estimates of his birth year have ranged from 1265 to 1285 but a forensic examination of his partially mummified body in 2002 showed he was about 50 when he died in 1331, indicating that he was born around 1280.

[5] By 1260, the fear of another Mongol invasion had subsided and during the next 100 years there were numerous contacts between Europe and China focused on trade opportunities and religious conversion.

In the opening chapter of his chronicle, he states "according to my wish, I crossed the sea and visited the countries of the unbelievers in order to win some harvest of souls.

[12][13] Odoric landed on the Indian coast at Tana where Thomas of Tolentino and his three Franciscan companions had recently been martyred for "blaspheming" Muhammad before the local magistrate or qadi.

From there, he proceeded around the southern tip of India and up along the southeast coast, where he visited the shrine of Thomas the Apostle, which tradition places near Chennai.

[14][15] From India, Odoric sailed in a junk to northern Sumatra, Java, and Borneo where he became the first European to make a recorded visit to the island.

It was at the time one of the great cities of the world and Odoric —like Marco Polo, Marignolli, and Ibn Battuta—gives details of its splendors.

He was attached, no doubt, to one of the churches founded by the Franciscan Archbishop John of Monte Corvino, at this time in extreme old age.

[19] After three years in Khanbaliq, Odoric elected to travel back to Europe, possibly in response to the emperor's request for more missionaries.

[2] Beyond here, the friar likely proceeded through Kashmir, Afghanistan, Persia, Armenia and Trebizond, where may have caught a ship home to Venice.

[20] Shortly after his return Odoric was at his Order's house attached to the Friary of St. Anthony at Padua, and it was there in May 1330 that he related the story of his travels, which was taken down in simple Latin by Friar William of Solagna.

[10] From Padua he is thought to have proceeded to Pisa in order to take ship for the Papal Court at Avignon, where he wanted to report on the affairs of the church in the far East, and request recruits for the missions in Cathay.

[22] As public veneration for Odoric grew, the patriarch ordered the body of the friar to be moved into a stone tomb, commissioned and paid for by the community of Udine and sculpted by a Venetian artist, Filippo de Sanctis.

Odoric was placed in the church of San Francesco and the chapel dedicated to him was frescoed in the fifteenth century with episodes of his journey and his miracles.

The tomb was removed due to the Venetian suppressions (1769) and after some wanderings it was placed in the church of San Maria del Carmine, where it is still to be found.

[10] Regarding China, his mention of Guangzhou by the name of Censcolam or Censcalam (Chin-Kalan), and his descriptions of the custom of fishing with tame cormorants, of the habit of letting the fingernails grow extravagantly, and of the compression of women's feet, are peculiar to him among the travellers of that age; Marco Polo omits them all.

The original manuscript of Odoric's narrative has been lost, but researchers have traced at least 117 copies, seventy-nine of them in Latin, twenty-three in Italian, eight in French, five in German, one in Castilian, and one in Welsh.

In other versions stories of miracles attributed to Odoric after his death were added in an effort to bolster the case for his beatification.

The curious discussion before the papal court respecting the beatification of Odoric forms a kind of blue-book issued ex typographia rev.