Lawrence of Portugal

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Lawrence of Portugal was a Franciscan friar and an envoy sent by Pope Innocent IV to the Mongols in 1245.

A letter survives in the Register of Innocent IV, dating Lawrence's departure from Lyon to 5 March 1245. The letter, published in Monumenta Germaniae Historica and usually referred to as Dei patris immensa, suggests that his mission was primarily religious in character.[1] Lawrence was to have approached the Mongols from the Levant.[2] Nothing is known of his fate, and the possibility remains that he never left.[3]

A second Franciscan mission, led by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, left Lyon on April 16, 1245 and arrived in the Mongol capital of Karakorum more than a year later.

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  1. ^ Monumenta Germaniae Historica; Epistolae Saeculi XIII: E Regestis Pontificum Romanorum, ed. Karl Rodenberg (Berlin, 1887), Vol. 2, No. 102, p. 72. [1]
  2. ^ Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (Stanford University Press, 1971), p. 87.
  3. ^ Gregory G. Guzman, "Simon of Saint-Quentin and the Dominican Mission to the Mongol Baiju: A Reappraisal" Speculum, Vol. 46, No. 2. (April., 1971), p. 234.