ENGUERRAND DE MARIGNY AND GIOVANNI DEI MARIGNOLLI (1347)

ENGUERRAND DE MARIGNY

Powerful chamberlain to the French king Philip IV the Fair who depended heavily on Marigny´s advice on foreign policy and on relations between king and church.

Marigny was described as the man who knew all the King´s secrets and who encouraged Philip to make drastic departures from his father´s foreing policy.

Equerry to Hugues de Bouville (Philip IV´s chamberlain) he became in 1298 chief bread bearer to the queen Joan of Navarre whose goddaughter Jeanne de Saint-Martin he married.

After 1302 Marigny´s rise was rapid.

Knighted and later created comte de Longeville he became grand chamberlain to the King, was sent to preside over the Norman exchequer in 1306 and subsequently became surintendant des finances et des bâtiments and capitaine of the Louvre.
His power reached its zenith in the years 1313-14 when he was in charge of the royal treasury and of the newer auditing department the chambre des comptes imposing on them a unified rule.
On Aug. 1, 1314 he adressed an assembly at Paris on the financial difficulties arising from Philip´s renewal of war with Flanders.

Generally unpopular, both with the nobility and with the bourgeoisie, and associated with the policy of heavy taxation and debasement of the coinage Marigny also incurred the special enmity of the King´s brother Charles of Valois.

In the last few months of Philip´s reign a commission was nominated to examine Marigny´s administration of the finances.

After the accession of Philip´s son Louis X, the membership of the commission was changed to include many of Margny´s enemies, including Charles of Valois.

Neverthless the accounts were found to be in order.
Charles of Valois then made further similar charges against Marigny who was arrested and confined successively in the Louvre, the Temple and the keep of Vicennes.

King Louis was inclined merely to banish Marigny. 
But Charles of Valois then accused the minister of sorcery and inmediate execution was ordered.

Marigny was hanged on the public galows at Montfaucon just to the northeast of Paris.
In 1317 his body was taken down and buried in the Chartreux at Paris.


GIOVANNI DEI MARIGNOLLI

Franciscan friar and one of four legates sent to the court of the Mongol emperor of China Togon-temür at Khanbaliq (Peking). His notes on the journey, though fragmentary, contain vivid descriptions that established him among the notable travellers to the Far East in the 14th century.

The mission left the papal city of Avignon now in southeast France in December 1338 and spent the winter of 1339-40 at he court of Muhammad Uzbek, khan of the Golden Horde (the autonomous western region of the Mongol empire).

From the Khan´s capital at Sarai on the Volga, near modern Volgograd, the legates crossed the steppes to Almarikh (now Kuldja, Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China) where they built a church and reached Khanbaliq in May or June 1342. There Marignolli remained for three or four years after which he travelled through eastern China until his departure in December 1347.

He reached Coilum (modern Quilon, now in Kerala, India) during Easter week 1348 and founded a Catholic church there.
He visited the shrine of St. Thomas, near Madras, as well as the kingdom of Saba which he identified with the biblical Sheba but which seems to have been Java.
Detained in Ceylon he was stripped of the gifts and Eastern rarities that he was carrying home but nevertheless was able to gather information on the country and its inhabitants.
He returned to Avignon (1353) by way of the Persian Gulf city of Hormuz also visiting Mesopotamia, Syria and Jerusalem.

In 1354-55 while serving as chaplain to the emperor Charles IV he was engaged in revising the annals of Bohemia interpolating them with recollections of his Asian travel.