Giovanni da Pian del Carpine appears to have been a native of Umbria, in modern-day Italy, where a place formerly called Pian del Carpine, but now Magione, stands near Perugia, on the road to Cortona.

He was one of the companions and disciples of his countryman Saint Francis of Assisi.

Giovanni bears a high repute in the Franciscan order, and had taken a prominent part in disseminating its teaching in northern Europe, holding successively the offices of warden (custos) in Saxony, and of provincial (minister) of Germany, and afterwards of Spain, perhaps of Barbary, and of Cologne.

He had been in the last post at the time of the great Mongol invasion of eastern Europe and of the disastrous Battle of Legnica, which threatened to cast European Christendom under the leadership of the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Ögedei Khan.

The dread of the Tatars was, however, still on people's mind four years later, when Pope Innocent IV dispatched the first formal Catholic mission to the Mongols, partly to protest against the latter's invasion of Christian lands, partly to gain trustworthy information regarding Mongol armies and their purposes.

Behind these there may have lurked the beginnings of a policy much developed later—of opening diplomatic intercourse with a power whose alliance might be valuable against Islam.

Pope Innocent IV has chosen Giovanni to head this mission.

Giovanni is around sixty-five at the time, and apparently is in charge of nearly everything in the mission.

As a papal legate, he bears a letter from the Pope to the Great Khan, Cum non solum.

Giovanni had started from Lyon, where the Pope is in residence, on April 16, 1245, accompanied by another friar, Stephen of Bohemia, who breaks down at Kaniv near Kiev and is left behind.