FRANCO of PERUGIA. – Dominican missionary who lived between the 13th and 14th centuries. In the years 1292–93 he taught theology (cursus sententiarum) in Florence and Naples; then he was conventual lector at Orvieto and Perugia. In 1298 he founded a convent of his Order in the Genoese colony of Caffa (Crimea) for the evangelization of the Kipchak Tatars, into whose language he translated some Latin writings. Around 1303 he first held the office of vicar general of the Congregation of the East, known as the Fratres Peregrinantes.
On 19 April 1318 Pope John XXII appointed him archbishop of the new Latin metropolitan see of Soldania in Persia, with six Dominican suffragan bishops. But in 1322 FRANCO resigned the archbishopric, though retaining the use of pontificals in Greek and infidel lands. He retired to a convent of his Order in the East, where he died in 1333. His eulogy is found in the necrology of the convent of S. Domenico in Perugia, to which he belonged.