The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano
74. We have seen in the most probable interpretation of the nickname
2177 words | Chapter 206
_Milioni_ that Polo’s popular reputation in his lifetime was of a
questionable kind; and a contemporary chronicler, already quoted,
has told us how on his death-bed the Traveller was begged by anxious
friends to retract his extraordinary stories.[20] A little later one
who copied the Book “_per passare tempo e malinconia_” says frankly
that he puts no faith in it.[21] Sir Thomas Brown is content “to carry
a wary eye” in reading “Paulus Venetus”; but others of our countrymen
in the last century express strong doubts whether he ever was in
Tartary or China.[22] Marden’s edition might well have extinguished
the last sparks of scepticism.[23] Hammer meant praise in calling Polo
“_der Vater orientalischer Hodogetik_,” in spite of the uncouthness of
the eulogy. But another grave German writer, ten years after Marsden’s
publication, put forth in a serious book that the whole story was a
clumsy imposture![24]
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[1] M. d’Avezac has refuted the common supposition that this admirable
traveller was a native of Brabant.
The form _Rubruquis_ of the name of the traveller William de Rubruk
has been habitually used in this book, perhaps without sufficient
consideration, but it is the most familiar in England, from its
use by Hakluyt and Purchas. The former, who first published the
narrative, professedly printed from an imperfect MS. belonging to
the Lord Lumley, which does not seem to be now known. But all the
MSS. collated by Messrs. Francisque-Michel and Wright, in preparing
their edition of the Traveller, call him simply Willelmus de Rubruc
or Rubruk.
Some old authors, apparently without the slightest ground, having
called him _Risbroucke_ and the like, it came to be assumed that he
was a native of Ruysbroeck, a place in South Brabant.
But there is a place still called _Rubrouck_ in French Flanders.
This is a commune containing about 1500 inhabitants, belonging to
the Canton of Cassel and _arrondissement_ of Hazebrouck, in the
Department du Nord. And we may take for granted, till facts are
alleged against it, that _this_ was the place from which the envoy
of St. Lewis drew his origin. Many documents of the Middle Ages,
referring expressly to this place Rubrouck, exist in the Library
of St. Omer, and a detailed notice of them has been published by
M. Edm. Coussemaker, of Lille. Several of these documents refer
to persons bearing the same name as the Traveller, _e.g._, in 1190,
Thierry de Rubrouc; in 1202 and 1221, Gauthier du Rubrouc; in
1250, Jean du Rubrouc; and in 1258, Woutermann de Rubrouc. It is
reasonable to suppose that Friar William was of the same stock.
See _Bulletin de la Soc. de Géographie_, 2nd vol. for 1868, pp.
569–570, in which there are some remarks on the subject by M.
d’Avezac; and I am indebted to the kind courtesy of that eminent
geographer himself for the indication of this reference and the
main facts, as I had lost a note of my own on the subject.
It seems a somewhat complex question whether a native even of
_French_ Flanders at that time should be necessarily claimable
as a Frenchman;[A] but no doubt on this point is alluded to by
M. d’Avezac, so he probably had good ground for that assumption.
[See also _Yule’s_ article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and
_Rockhill’s Rubruck_, Int., p. xxxv.—H. C.]
That cross-grained Orientalist, I. J. Schmidt, on several occasions
speaks contemptuously of this veracious and delightful traveller,
whose evidence goes in the teeth of some of his crotchets. But I am
glad to find that Professor Peschel takes a view similar to that
expressed in the text: “The narrative of Ruysbroek [Rubruquis],
almost immaculate in its freedom from fabulous insertions, may
be indicated on account of its truth to nature as the greatest
geographical masterpiece of the Middle Ages.” (_Gesch. der
Erdkunde_, 1865, p. 151.)
[A] The County of Flanders was at this time in large part a fief of
the French Crown. (See _Natalis de Wailly_, notes to Joinville,
p. 576.) But that would not much affect the question either one
way or the other.
[2] High as Marco’s name deserves to be set, his place is not beside
the writer of such burning words as these addressed to Ferdinand
and Isabella: “From the most tender age I went to sea, and to
this day I have continued to do so. Whosoever devotes himself to
this craft must desire to know the secrets of Nature here below.
For 40 years now have I thus been engaged, and wherever man has
sailed hitherto on the face of the sea, thither have I sailed also.
I have been in constant relation with men of learning, whether
ecclesiastic or secular, Latins and Greeks, Jews and Moors, and
men of many a sect besides. To accomplish this my longing (to
know the Secrets of the World) I found the Lord favourable to my
purposes; it is He who hath given me the needful disposition and
understanding. He bestowed upon me abundantly the knowledge of
seamanship: and of Astronomy He gave me enough to work withal,
and so with Geometry and Arithmetic.... In the days of my youth
I studied works of all kinds, history, chronicles, philosophy,
and other arts, and to apprehend these the Lord opened my
understanding. Under His manifest guidance I navigated hence to the
Indies; for it was the Lord who gave me the will to accomplish that
task, and it was in the ardour of that will that I came before your
Highnesses. All those who heard of my project scouted and derided
it; all the acquirements I have mentioned stood me in no stead;
and if in your Highnesses, and in you alone, Faith and Constancy
endured, to Whom are due the Lights that have enlightened you as
well as me, but to the Holy Spirit?” (Quoted in _Humboldt’s Examen
Critique_, I. 17, 18.)
[3] Libri, however, speaks too strongly when he says: “The finest
of all the results due to the influence of Marco Polo is that
of having stirred Columbus to the discovery of the New World.
Columbus, jealous of Polo’s laurels, spent his life in preparing
means to get to that Zipangu of which the Venetian traveller had
told such great things; his desire was to reach China by sailing
westward, and in his way he fell in with America.” (_H. des
Sciences Mathém._ etc. II. 150.)
The fact seems to be that Columbus knew of Polo’s revelations only
at second hand, from the letters of the Florentine Paolo Toscanelli
and the like; and I cannot find that he _ever_ refers to Polo by
name. [How deep was the interest taken by Colombus in Marco Polo’s
travels is shown by the numerous marginal notes of the Admiral in
the printed copy of the latin version of Pipino kept at the Bib.
Colombina at Seville. See _Appendix H_. p. 558.—H. C.] Though to
the day of his death he was full of imaginations about Zipangu and
the land of the Great Kaan as being in immediate proximity to his
discoveries, these were but accidents of his great theory. It was
the intense conviction he had acquired of the absolute smallness
of the Earth, of the vast extension of Asia eastward, and of the
consequent narrowness of the Western Ocean, on which his life’s
project was based. This conviction he seems to have derived
chiefly from the works of Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly. But the latter
borrowed his collected arguments from Roger Bacon, who has stated
them, erroneous as they are, very forcibly in his _Opus Majus_ (p.
137), as Humboldt has noticed in his _Examen_ (vol. i. p. 64). The
Spanish historian Mariana makes a strange jumble of the alleged
guides of Columbus, saying that some ascribed his convictions
to “the information given by _one Marco Polo, a Florentine
Physician!_” (“como otros dizen, por aviso que le dio _un cierto
Marco Polo, Medico Florentin_;” _Hist. de España_, lib. xxvi. cap
3). Toscanelli is called by Columbus _Maestro Paulo_, which seems
to have led to this mistake; see Sign. _G. Uzielli_, in _Boll.
della Soc. Geog. Ital._ IX. p. 119. [Also by the same: _Paolo dal
Pozzo Toscanelli iniziatore della scoperta d’America_, Florence,
1892; _Toscanelli_, No. 1; _Toscanelli_, Vol. V. of the _Raccolta
Colombiana_, 1894.—H. C.]
[4] “C’est diminuer l’expression d’un éloge que de l’exagérer.”
(_Humboldt, Examen_, III. 13.)
[5] See vol. ii. p. 318, and vol. i. p. 404.
[6] Vol. i. p. 423.
[7] Vol. ii. p. 85, and _Apollonius Rhodius, Argonaut_. II. 1012.
[8] Chinese Observers record the length of Comets’ tails by _cubits_!
[9] The map, perhaps, gives too favourable an idea of Marco’s
geographical conceptions. For in such a construction much has to
be supplied for which there are no data, and that is apt to take
mould from modern knowledge. Just as in the book illustrations of
ninety years ago we find that Princesses of Abyssinia, damsels of
Otaheite, and Beauties of Mary Stuart’s Court have all somehow a
savour of the high waists, low foreheads, and tight garments of
1810.
We are told that Prince Pedro of Portugal in 1426 received from the
Signory of Venice a map which was supposed to be either an original
or a copy of one by Marco Polo’s own hand. (_Major’s P. Henry_, p.
62.) There is no evidence to justify any absolute expression of
disbelief; and if any map-maker with the spirit of the author of
the Carta Catalana then dwelt in Venice, Polo certainly could not
have gone to his grave uncatechised. But I should suspect the map
to have been a copy of the old one that existed in the Sala dello
Scudo of the Ducal Palace.
The maps now to be seen painted on the walls of that Hall, and on
which Polo’s route is marked, are not of any great interest. But in
the middle of the 15th century there was an old _Descriptio Orbis
sive Mappamundus_ in the Hall, and when the apartment was renewed
in 1459 a decree of the Senate ordered that such a map should be
repainted on the new walls. This also perished by a fire in 1483.
On the motion of Ramusio, in the next century, four new maps were
painted. These had become dingy and ragged, when, in 1762, the Doge
Marco Foscarini caused them to be renewed by the painter Francesco
Grisellini. He professed to have adhered closely to the old maps,
but he certainly did not, as Morelli testifies. Eastern Asia looks
as if based on a work of Ramusio’s age, but Western Asia is of
undoubtedly modern character. (See _Operetti di Iacopo Morelli_,
Ven. 1820, I. 299.)
[10] “Humboldt confirms the opinion I have more than once expressed
that too much must not be inferred from the silence of authors. He
adduces three important and perfectly undeniable matters of fact,
as to which no evidence is to be found where it would be most
anticipated: In the archives of Barcelona no trace of the triumphal
entry of Columbus into that city; _in Marco Polo no allusion to
the Chinese Wall_; in the archives of Portugal nothing about
the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci in the service of that crown.”
(_Varnhagen_ v. _Ense_, quoted by Hayward, _Essays_, 2nd Ser. I.
36.) See regarding the Chinese Wall the remarks referred to above,
at p. 292 of this volume.
[11] [It is a strange fact that Polo never mentions the use of _Tea_
in China, although he travelled through the Tea districts in Fu
Kien, and tea was then as generally drunk by the Chinese as it
is now. It is mentioned more than four centuries earlier by the
Mohammedan merchant Soleyman, who visited China about the middle of
the 9th century. He states (_Reinaud, Relation des Voyages faits
par les Arabes et les Persans dans l’Inde et à la Chine_, 1845,
I. 40): “The people of China are accustomed to use as a beverage
an infusion of a plant, which they call _sakh_, and the leaves of
which are aromatic and of a bitter taste. It is considered very
wholesome. This plant (the leaves) is sold in all the cities of the
empire.” (_Bretschneider, Hist. Bot. Disc._ I. p. 5.)—H. C.]
[12] It is probable that Persian, which had long been the language of
Turanian courts, was also the common tongue of foreigners at that
of the Mongols. _Pulisanghin_ and _Zardandan_, in the preceding
list, are pure Persian. So are several of the Oriental phrases
noted at p. _84_. See also notes on _Ondanique_ and _Vernique_ at
pp. 93 and 384 of this volume, on _Tacuin_ at p. 448, and a note
at p. _93_ _supra_. The narratives of Odoric, and others of the
early travellers to Cathay, afford corroborative examples. Lord
Stanley of Alderley, in one of his contributions to the Hakluyt
Series, has given evidence from experience that Chinese Mahomedans
still preserve the knowledge of numerous Persian words.
[13] Compare these errors with like errors of Herodotus, _e.g._,
regarding the conspiracy of the False Smerdis. (See Rawlinson’s
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