his story be correct, a transcriber in peculiarly unfavourable
circumstances. He has also himself suffered much from the inaccuracy
of copyists. But nothing has really been more unfortunate
for the reputation of Jordanes as a writer than the extreme preciousness
of the information which he has preserved to us. The Teutonic
tribes whose dim origins he records have in the course of centuries
attained to world-wide dominion. The battle in the Mauriac plains
of which he is really the sole historian, is now seen to have had
important bearings on the destinies of the world. And thus the
hasty pamphlet of a half-educated Gothic monk has been forced
into prominence, almost into rivalry with the finished productions
of the great writers of classical antiquity. No wonder that it
stands the comparison badly; but with all its faults the Getica of
Jordanes will probably ever retain its place side by side with the
De moribus Germanorum of Tacitus as a chief source of information
respecting the history, institutions and modes of thought of our
Teutonic forefathers.
Editions.—The classical edition is that of Mommsen (in Mon. Germ. hist. auct. antiq., v., ii.), which supersedes the older editions, such as that in the first volume of Muratori’s Scriptt. rer. Ital. The best MS. is the Heidelberg MS., written in Germany, probably in the 8th century; but this perished in the fire at Mommsen’s house. The next of the MSS. in value are the Vaticanus Palatinus of the 10th century, and the Valenciennes MS. of the 9th.
Authorities.—Von Sybel’s essay, De fontibus Jordanis (1838); Schirren’s De ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat Commentatio (Dorpat, 1858); Kopke’s Die Anfänge des Königthums bei den Gothen (Berlin, 1859); Dahn’s Die Könige der Germanen, vol. ii. (Munich, 1861); Ebert’s Geschichte der Christlich-Lateinischen Literatur (Leipsic, 1874); Wattenbach’s Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter (Berlin, 1877); and the introduction of Mommsen to his edition. (T. H.; E. Br.)
JORDANUS (Jordan Catalani) (fl. 1321–1330), French Dominican missionary and explorer in Asia, was perhaps born
at Séverac in Aveyron, north-east of Toulouse. In 1302 he
may have accompanied the famous Thomas of Tolentino, via
Negropont, to the East; but it is only in 1321 that we definitely
discover him in western India, in the company of the same
Thomas and certain other Franciscan missionaries on their
way to China. Ill-luck detained them at Tana in Salsette island,
near Bombay; and here Jordanus’ companions (“the four
martyrs of Tana”) fell victims to Moslem fanaticism (April 7,
1321). Jordanus, escaping, worked some time at Baruch in
Gujarat, near the Nerbudda estuary, and at Suali (?) near Surat;
to his fellow-Dominicans in north Persia he wrote two letters—the
first from Gogo in Gujarat (October 12, 1321), the second
from Tana (January 24, 1323/4)—describing the progress of
this new mission. From these letters we learn that Roman
attention had already been directed, not only to the Bombay
region, but also to the extreme south of the Indian peninsula,
especially to “Columbum,” Quilon, or Kulam in Travancore;
Jordanus’ words may imply that he had already started a
mission there before October 1321. From Catholic traders he
had learnt that Ethiopia (i.e. Abyssinia and Nubia) was
accessible to Western Europeans; at this very time, as we
know from other sources, the earliest Latin missionaries penetrated
thither. Finally, the Epistles of Jordanus, like the contemporary
Secreta of Marino Sanuto (1306–1321), urge the
pope to establish a Christian fleet upon the Indian seas.
Jordanus, between 1324 and 1328 (if not earlier), probably
visited Kulam and selected it as the best centre for his future
work; it would also appear that he revisited Europe about 1328,
passing through Persia, and perhaps touching at the great
Crimean port of Soldaia or Sudak. He was appointed a bishop
in 1328 and nominated by Pope John XXII. to the see of
Columbum in 1330. Together with the new bishop of Samarkand,
Thomas of Mancasola, Jordanus was commissioned to
take the pall to John de Cora, archbishop of Sultaniyah in
Persia, within whose province Kulam was reckoned; he was
also commended to the Christians of south India, both east
and west of Cape Comorin, by Pope John. Either before
going out to Malabar as bishop, or during a later visit to
the west, Jordanus probably wrote his Mirabilia, which from
internal evidence can only be fixed within the period 1329–1338;
in this work he furnished the best account of Indian
regions, products, climate, manners, customs, fauna and flora
given by any European in the Middle Ages—superior even to
Marco Polo’s. In his triple division of the Indies, India Major
comprises the shorelands from Malabar to Cochin China; while
India Minor stretches from Sind (or perhaps from Baluchistan)
to Malabar; and India Tertia (evidently dominated by African
conceptions in his mind) includes a vast undefined coast-region
west of Baluchistan, reaching into the neighbourhood of, but
not including, Ethiopia and Prester John’s domain. Jordanus’
Mirabilia contains the earliest clear African identification of
Prester John, and what is perhaps the first notice of the Black
Sea under that name; it refers to the author’s residence in
India Major and especially at Kulam, as well as to his travels in
Armenia, north-west Persia, the Lake Van region, and Chaldaea;
and it supplies excellent descriptions of Parsee doctrines and
burial customs, of Hindu ox-worship, idol-ritual, and suttee,
and of Indian fruits, birds, animals and insects. After the 8th
of April 1330 we have no more knowledge of Bishop Jordanus.
Of Jordanus’ Epistles there is only one MS., viz. Paris, National Library, 5006 Lat., fol. 182, r. and v.; of the Mirabilia also one MS. only, viz. London, British Museum, Additional MSS., 19,513, fols. 3, r.–12 r. The text of the Epistles is in Quétif and Echard, Scriptores ordinis praedicatorum, i. 549–550 (Epistle I.); and in Wadding, Annales minorum, vi. 359–361 (Epistle II.); the text of the Mirabilia in the Paris Geog. Soc.’s Recueil de voyages, iv. 1–68 (1839). The Papal letters referring to Jordanus are in Raynaldus, Annales ecclesiastici, 1330, §§ lv. and lvii. (April 8; Feb. 14). See also Sir H. Yule’s Jordanus, a version of the Mirabilia with a commentary (Hakluyt Soc., 1863) and the same editor’s Cathay, giving a version of the Epistles, with a commentary, &c. (Hak. Soc., 1866) pp. 184–185, 192–196, 225–230; F. Kunstmann, “Die Mission in Meliapor und Tana” and “Die Mission in Columbo” in the Historisch-politische Blätter of Phillips and Görres, xxxvii. 25–38, 135–152 (Munich, 1856), &c.; C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 215–235. (C. R. B.)
JORIS, DAVID, the common name of Jan Jorisz or Joriszoon (c. 1501–1556), Anabaptist heresiarch who called himself later Jan van Brugge; was born in 1501 or 1502, probably in Flanders,
at Ghent or Bruges. His father, Georgius Joris de Koman, otherwise
Joris van Amersfoordt, probably a native of Bruges, was a
shopkeeper and amateur actor at Delft; from the circumstance
that he played the part of King David, his son received the name
of David, but probably not in baptism. His mother was Marytje,
daughter of Jan de Gorter, of a good family in Delft. As a child
he was clever and delicate. He seems then or later to have
acquired some tincture of learning. His first known occupation
was that of a glass-painter; in 1522 he painted windows for the
church at Enkhuizen, North Holland (the birthplace of Paul
Potter). In pursuit of his art he travelled, and is said to have
reached England; ill-health drove him homewards in 1524, in
which year he married Dirckgen Willems at Delft. In the
same year the Lutheran reformation took hold of him, and he
began to issue appeals in prose and verse against the Mass and
against the pope as antichrist. On Ascension Day 1528 he
committed an outrage on the sacrament carried in procession;
he was placed in the pillory, had his tongue bored, and was
banished from Delft for three years. He turned to the Anabaptists,
was rebaptized in 1533, and for some years led a
wandering life. He came into relations with John à Lasco, and
with Menno Simons. Much influenced by Melchior Hofman,
he had no sympathy with the fanatic violence of the Münster
faction. At the Buckholdt conference in August 1536 he played
a mediating part. His mother, in 1537, suffered martyrdom as
an Anabaptist. Soon after he took up a rôle of his own, having
visions and a gift of prophecy. He adapted in his own interest
the theory (constantly recurrent among mystics and innovators,
from the time of Abbot Joachim to the present day) of three dispensations,
the old, with its revelation of the Father, the newer
with its revelation of the Son, and the final or era of the Spirit.
Of this newest revelation Christus David was the mouthpiece,
supervening on Christus Jesus. From the 1st of April 1544,
bringing with him some of his followers, he took up his abode in
Basel, which was to be the New Jerusalem. Here he styled
himself Jan van Brugge. His identity was unknown to the
authorities of Basel, who had no suspicion of his heresies. By
his writings he maintained his hold on his numerous followers
in Holland and Friesland. These monotonous writings, all in
Dutch, flowed in a continual stream from 1524 (though none is
