Niccolò de' Conti was a Venetian merchant, explorer, and writer whose travels through the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia lasted about 25 years, from around 1419 until his return to Venice in 1444. His account, recorded in Latin by the humanist Poggio Bracciolini, is a leading European description of the East in the fifteenth century.
Background
Niccolò de' Conti was born around 1395 in Chioggia, a town of the Republic of Venice on the lagoon south of the city, into a noble merchant family. Venice was then a leading maritime trading republic, and its merchants sent ships and agents throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
He left Venice around 1419 on a journey that lasted about 25 years. He first settled in Damascus, where he spent enough time to learn Arabic. Unlike many Venetians who concentrated on trade with Egypt, he ranged far beyond the Mediterranean, into Persia, India, and Southeast Asia.
Career
Conti's route began in Damascus, from which he crossed the north Arabian desert and the Euphrates into southern Mesopotamia and reached Baghdad, a major city of the Islamic East. Later he reached Hormuz on the Persian Gulf and the Persian trading centre of Calacatia, where he learned the language and formed a partnership with Persian merchants who accompanied him on his travels.
From Vijayanagar, the capital of a Hindu kingdom in the Deccan, he travelled near the Tungabhadra river and then to Mylapore near Madras. He described Mylapore as the traditional resting place of the body of St Thomas and the holiest shrine of the local Nestorian Christians, whom he said were scattered across India in the way that Jews lived among Venetians. He then described Ceylon and its cinnamon trees, although he probably visited the island on the return journey.
His outward route next took him to Sumatra, where he stayed a year and gathered information on its camphor, pepper, and gold, as well as on its people, whom he described as cruel and cannibalistic. From Sumatra a stormy voyage of sixteen days brought him to Tenasserim on the Malay Peninsula. He reached the mouth of the Ganges, travelled up and down that river over several months, visited Burdwan and Arakan, entered Burma, and navigated the Irrawaddy to Ava, a Burmese royal capital.
He spent time in Pegu, a city of the Mon kingdom, before crossing into the Malay Archipelago and reaching Java, the farthest point of his journey. He remained there for nine months and then began his return by way of Champa, a kingdom of Indo-China. A month's voyage from there brought him to Quilon in south-west India. He then sailed past Cochin, Calicut, and Cambay to Socotra, which he described as still mainly inhabited by Nestorian Christians, and on to Aden, the port of Jidda for Mecca, and across the desert to Cairo and Mount Sinai.
He arrived in Venice in 1444. Poggio Bracciolini, a Florentine humanist and secretary to Pope Eugene IV, recorded Conti's account in Latin that year, and Conti remained in Venice as a respected merchant. He died in Venice in 1469.
Religion
Conti's religious history is documented mainly through an episode during his travels. Britannica records that he renounced Christianity while abroad and that, as penance, he was required to recount his ventures to the secretary of Pope Eugene IV. Renouncing a faith implies a prior commitment to it, and the Christianity in question was the Latin Christianity of the Venetian world, a church organized around the papacy and its sacraments.
Religion shaped the societies he visited. In Damascus and Baghdad he moved within the Islamic world, whose commerce he joined and whose language he learned. In southern India he described Nestorian Christians, members of the Church of the East, a Christian tradition that developed in Persia and Mesopotamia and spread along trade routes to India. His account of Mylapore, a shrine associated with the apostle Thomas, shows his attention to the Christian communities he encountered on the way.
Connections
Conti's best-documented connection is with Poggio Bracciolini, the humanist who recorded his account in Latin in 1444. Poggio incorporated the narrative into Book IV of his De varietate fortunae, which made it known to later readers. After Poggio's death in 1459, numerous manuscript versions of the travel account circulated, based on his text.
