Volume I Part 29 (2/2)
[11] Ibid. 56-59.
[12] _Introd._ pp. lx.x.xvi.-vii. note.
[13] See _Jour. As._ ser. II. tom. xii. p. 251.
[14] ”_Seignors Enperaor, & Rois, Dux & Marquois, Cuens, Chevaliers & Bargions_ [for Borgiois] _& toutes gens qe uoles sauoir les deuerses jenerasions des homes_, & les deuersites des deuerses region dou monde, _si prennes cestui lire & le feites lire & chi troueres toutes les grandismes meruoilles_,” etc.
[15] The portrait of Rustician here referred to would have been a precious ill.u.s.tration for our book. But unfortunately it has not been transferred to MS. 6961, nor apparently to any other noticed by Paulin Paris.
[16] _Jour. As._ as above.
[17] See _Liebrecht's Dunlop_, p. 77; and _MSS. Francois_, II. 349, 353.
The alleged gift to Rustician is also put forth by D'Israeli the Elder in his _Amenities of Literature_, 1841, I. p. 103.
[18] E.g. Geronimo, _Girolamo_; and garofalo, _garofano_; Cristoforo, _Cristovalo_; gonfalone, _gonfanone_, etc.
[19] See the List in _Archivio Stor. Ital._ VI. p. 64, seqq.
VIII. NOTICES OF MARCO POLO'S HISTORY, AFTER THE TERMINATION OF HIS IMPRISONMENT AT GENOA.
43. A few very disconnected notices are all that can be collected of matter properly biographical in relation to the quarter century during which Marco Polo survived the Genoese captivity.
[Sidenote: Death of Marco's Father before 1300. Will of his brother Maffeo.]
We have seen that he would probably reach Venice in the course of August, 1299. Whether he found his aged father alive is not known; but we know at least that a year later (31st August, 1300) Messer Nicolo was no longer in life.
This we learn from the Will of the younger Maffeo, Marco's brother, which bears the date just named, and of which we give an abstract below.[1] It seems to imply strong regard for the testator's brother Marco, who is made inheritor of the bulk of the property, failing the possible birth of a son. I have already indicated some conjectural deductions from this doc.u.ment. I may add that the terms of the second clause, as quoted in the note, seem to me to throw considerable doubt on the genealogy which bestows a large family of sons upon this brother Maffeo. If he lived to have such a family it seems improbable that the draft which he thus left in the hands of a notary, to be converted into a Will in the event of his death (a curious example of the validity attaching to all acts of notaries in those days), should never have been superseded, but should actually have been so converted after his death, as the existence of the parchment seems to prove. But for this circ.u.mstance we might suppose the Marcolino mentioned in the ensuing paragraph to have been a son of the younger Maffeo.
Messer Maffeo, the uncle, was, we see, alive at this time. We do not know the year of his death. But it is alluded to by Friar Pipino in the Preamble to his Translation of the Book, supposed to have been executed about 1315-1320; and we learn from a doc.u.ment in the Venetian archives (see p. 77) that it must have been previous to 1318, and subsequent to February 1309, the date of his last Will. The Will itself is not known to be extant, but from the reference to it in this doc.u.ment we learn that he left 1000 _lire_ of public debt[2] (_? imprest.i.torum_) to a certain Marco Polo, called _Marcolino_. The relations.h.i.+p of this Marco to old Maffeo is not stated, but we may suspect him to have been an illegitimate son.
[Marcolino was a son of Nicolo, son of Marco the Elder; see vol. ii., _Calendar_, No. 6.--H. C.]
[Sidenote: Doc.u.mentary notices of Polo at this time. The sobriquet of Milione.]
44. In 1302 occurs what was at first supposed to be a glimpse of Marco as a citizen, slight and quaint enough; being a resolution on the Books of the Great Council to exempt the respectable Marco Polo from the penalty incurred by him on account of the omission to have his water-pipe duly inspected. But since our Marco's claims to the designation of _n.o.bilis Vir_ have been established, there is a doubt whether the _providus vir_ or _prud'-homme_ here spoken of may not have been rather his namesake Marco Polo of Cannareggio or S. Geremia, of whose existence we learn from another entry of the same year.[3] It is, however, possible that Marco the Traveller was called to the Great Council _after_ the date of the doc.u.ment in question.
We have seen that the Traveller, and after him his House and his Book, acquired from his contemporaries the surname, or nickname rather, of _Il Milione_. Different writers have given different explanations of the origin of this name; some, beginning with his contemporary Fra Jacopo d'Acqui, (supra, p. 54), ascribing it to the family's having brought home a fortune of a million of _lire_, in fact to their being _millionaires_.
This is the explanation followed by Sansovino, Marco Barbaro, Coronelli, and others.[4] More far-fetched is that of Fontanini, who supposes the name to have been given to the Book as containing a great number of stories, like the _Cento Novelle_ or the _Thousand and One Nights!_ But there can be no doubt that Ramusio's is the true, as it is the natural, explanation; and that the name was bestowed on Marco by the young wits of his native city, because of his frequent use of a word which appears to have been then unusual, in his attempts to convey an idea of the vast wealth and magnificence of the Kaan's Treasury and Court.[5] Ramusio has told us that he had seen Marco styled by this sobriquet in the Books of the Signory; and it is pleasant to be able to confirm this by the next doc.u.ment which we cite. This is an extract from the Books of the Great Council under both April, 1305, condoning the offence of a certain Bonocio of Mestre in smuggling wine, for whose penalty one of the sureties had been the n.o.bILIS VIR MARCHUS PAULO MILIONI.[6]
It is alleged that long after our Traveller's death there was always, in the Venetian Masques, one individual who a.s.sumed the character of Marco Milioni, and told Munchausenlike stories to divert the vulgar. Such, if this be true, was the honour of our prophet among the populace of his own country.[7]
45. A little later we hear of Marco once more, as presenting a copy of his Book to a n.o.ble Frenchman in the service of Charles of Valois.
[Sidenote: Polo's relations with Thibault de Cepoy.]
This Prince, brother of Philip the Fair, in 1301 had married Catharine, daughter and heiress of Philip de Courtenay, t.i.tular Emperor of Constantinople, and on the strength of this marriage had at a later date set up his own claim to the Empire of the East. To this he was prompted by Pope Clement V., who in the beginning of 1306 wrote to Venice, stimulating that Government to take part in the enterprise. In the same year, Charles and his wife sent as their envoys to Venice, in connection with this matter, a n.o.ble knight called THIBAULT DE CEPOY, along with an ecclesiastic of Chartres called Pierre le Riche, and these two succeeded in executing a treaty of alliance with Venice, of which the original, dated 14th December, 1306, exists at Paris. Thibault de Cepoy eventually went on to Greece with a squadron of Venetian Galleys, but accomplished nothing of moment, and returned to his master in 1310.[8]
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