Resumen de Aspetti storici della missione di Giovanni da Montecorvino nel Cathay.
The author sheds light on some historical aspects of the Franciscan missionary venture in the Far East (14th century), in order to review it. A new visitation of those events shows the factors which contributed to favor the foundation of the Catholic Church in Cathay (a strong missionary impulse of the medieval Franciscan movement, openness of Mongol sovereigns towards Christianity, geographic unity of the Mongol empire, and good communications throughout the territory) and to its extinction (fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty and rise of the Ming dynasty, the conversion of Persian Mongols to Islam, which caused the breaking of century old terrestrial communications, the black pest of 1348, and eevangelization, more oriented to Mongol groups than to the Chinese indigenes).
