medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Blaise is also invoked prophylactically on his feast day (which in the Northern Hemisphere occurs during a season when upper respiratory infections are common) to ward off coughs and other afflictions of the throat. As a parochial school student in a Roman Catholic parish I received annually the traditional Blessing of the Throat with crossed candles; as I remember the blessing, it was a prayer for intercession that God might deliver me of all illness of the throat, not specifically of +present+ illness.
Odoric Mattiuzzi is better known to students of Franciscan missionary work in the Orient and of late medieval travel literature as Odoric of Pordenone. His _Relatio_ is an "as told to" book in which O.'s oral narratives were given written form by William of Solagna. This took place at Udine in 1330, so the Friulan Odoric had certainly returned home, even if he had not fulfilled his intent of reporting personally to the pope. Both a French translation (1351) of O.'s _Relatio_ and (to a lesser extent) the Latin original are said to have been used in the creation of the _Book of John Mandeville_ (ca. 1360).
The standard edition of the _Relatio_ is that of A. van den Wyngaert, _Sinica Franciscana_ 1 (1929), pp. 413-95. A nineteenth-century translation into English by Henry Yule (originally in his _Cathay and the Way Thither_ [1966], I, pp. 1-162) has recently been reprinted as _The Travels of Friar Odoric: A 14th-century Journal of the Blessed Odoric of Pordenone_ (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 2001).
Best,
John Dillon
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