FRANCO di PERUGIA. - Dominican missionary who lived between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the years 1292–93 he taught theology (curator sententiarum) at Florence and Naples; thereafter 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 Kipčak Tartars, into whose language he translated certain Latin writings. Around 1303 he was the first to hold the office of vicar general of the Dominican Congregation of the East, known as that of the Pilgrim Friars.
On 1 Apr. 1318 Pope Giovanni XXII made him archbishop of the new Latin metropolitan see of Soldania in Persia, with six Dominican suffragan bishops. But in 1322 F. resigned the archbishopric, while retaining the use of pontificals in Greek and infidel lands. He withdrew to a convent of his Order in the East, where he died in the year 1333. His eulogy is found in the necrology of the convent of S. Domenico in Perugia, to which he belonged.