Laurence Bergreen

by Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

  NO ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT survives from the months that Polo and Rustichello spent together in prison. Produced before the invention of movable type in the West, the account was circulated throughout Europe in handmade copies in different languages, transcribed by monks, and collected by nobles for their libraries. In the process, it was often altered—sometimes intentionally and sometimes through sheer carelessness or accident. As a result, many sections are plainly out of order; often, chapters, paragraphs, and even sentences appear in the wrong place, breaking the narrative flow.

  On the basis of internal evidence—episodes that Marco promises to narrate, but that never turn up in the narrative—it is incomplete, particularly the latter chapters. It is not that Marco’s energy is flagging; whole sections seem to be missing or truncated. In the absence of a definitive manuscript, scholars and translators have relied on the incomplete versions that have turned up in libraries and archives, both secular and religious, over the centuries, although the versions vary greatly, with some containing many more chapters than others. None of them feels complete in all respects. They resemble scripts without stage directions; the audience must supply its own, and make its best guess about where Marco might be when he describes an encounter, and even about his attitude—is he being reverent or ironic, amused or outraged? He was capable of registering all these emotions, and more, but they have to be coaxed from Rustichello’s fractured French. Despite his limitations, Rustichello manages to convey Marco’s narrative voice, by turns histrionic, reverent, and bawdy, constantly shifting in tone and tempo. Marco bubbles over with stories of his travels in Asia, and embellishes his years in the service of Kublai Khan with bawdy jokes, double entendres, and asides. The result is a compendium of his personal experiences along with the impersonal forces of history, like graffiti on granite.

  Rustichello reveals Marco as volatile, high-strung, self-dramatizing, and subject to endless mood swings. He captures Marco’s nonstop rush of memory and language, as well as his addiction to overstatement. Marco’s naïveté shines through undiminished, especially the sense that he never met a ruler he did not admire wholeheartedly. The Marco of the manuscript talks too loudly and quickly; he likes to throw his voice, and to mimic whenever he can. Unlike many compulsive talkers, he rarely repeats himself, and he is fully aware that he is spinning one of the greatest stories ever told. Beneath the lively surface of the narrative a different Marco can be glimpsed: a person of lucid intelligence, phenomenal memory, and, if he relied on records kept in China as he tells his story, attention to detail. Although he gives in to the passions of the moment—hero worship of Kublai Khan, fascination with the countless women who cross his path—he is rarely fooled in the long run, but remains skeptical. The impulsive sensualist grows into a seeker after truth and spiritual fulfillment, goals that prove to be far more elusive than the profitable trading that is the basis of his livelihood. With his quicksilver intelligence, Marco constantly evaluates the sights and people he encounters, and he tries to make them comprehensible to his readers. Like any diligent reporter, he takes care to furnish the who’s, what’s, and where’s of his story, but he is much weaker on the when’s, for he does not provide a true chronology of his decades in China, with the exception of his voyage into and out of Asia. Rather, he assembles thematic descriptions of places he visited or heard about, studded with anecdotes and bits of history that he picked up along the way.

  The impassioned storyteller is never less than chatty, and often rises to great heights of eloquence as the recording angel of vanished civilizations. If this narrative as rendered by Rustichello is anything like the tales Marco spontaneously told his Genoese captors, it is easy to understand why they were transfixed. Marco’s hybrid persona, part Venetian, part Mongol, imparts a distinctive flavor to his account; no other record of a pilgrim’s progress through China matches his zest, his profusion of data, and his imaginative sweep.

  No storyteller ever had a surer sense that an audience would materialize, prepared to hang on every word. Marco exudes confidence that he is writing for the present, and for history; his chronicle seems, among other things, an obvious bid for fame, a stratagem to perpetuate his name. If that indeed was his goal, he succeeded perhaps more than he imagined, for “Marco Polo” has become synonymous with travel both real and metaphorical, and the peaceful exploration of the unknown.

  Throughout the brief chapters of his account, Marco displays an exaggerated sense of self. He places himself center stage during the great events of his day—battles, court intrigues, scandals—when the historical record often shows that his role was minor or nonexistent: that he was more onlooker than actor. Nevertheless, his penchant for self-aggrandizement, which is startlingly apparent compared with the self-effacing tone of accounts left by other travelers and pilgrims of that era, imparts urgency, meaning, and emotion to his chronicle. It is memorable in large part because it overflows with amour propre. Everything that Marco encounters or hears about matters greatly to him, and he makes it matter to his audience as well. He jealously guards his privileged seat at the pageant of history; in an astonishing act of daring, he appoints himself chronicler of the East and the West.

  EVENTUALLY, copyists created more than a hundred versions of Marco’s account, and no two versions were alike. To simplify the enormous textual puzzle these versions presented, scholars adopted the convention of assigning them to either of two groups, labeled simply A and B. Many A manuscripts contain obvious interpolations—that is, additions made by overzealous translators—and errors abound. For example, a sixteenth-century Tuscan translation derives from a Latin translation of an earlier Tuscan version, thought to be based on a very early version of Rustichello’s French. Marco’s nuances, flashes of humor, and irony often did not survive the translating and retranslating. To complicate matters even more, the B manuscripts often contain material not found in the A group. Some scholars believe that Marco may have overseen the B versions on his return to Venice, to satisfy the curiosity of readers seeking a fuller account than the one he had composed while in jail. Like a series of studies of the same subject by an artist, each of the manuscripts has some claim to authenticity, but none contains the last word on the subject of his travels.

  WHILE MARCO REMAINED in captivity in Genoa, his father, Niccolò, and his uncle Maffeo stayed behind in Venice, concerned for his safety. They repeatedly attempted to ransom him. They had no idea that he actually enjoyed a certain amount of comfort and status in captivity, and was engaged in a collaboration about his fantastic travels.

  They also had plans for Marco’s future, even if he had none. Since their return to Venice, they had been trying to arrange a respectable marriage for him, if only to retain wealth on their side of the family in future generations. Marco had resisted the idea, but while he was in captivity they were trying to find him a suitable match in expectation of his safe return.

  It seems they eventually despaired of doing so. “Seeing that they could not ransom him under any condition,” Ramusio later wrote, “and having consulted together, they decided that Messer Niccolò, who though he was very old was nonetheless of robust constitution, should take a wife unto himself.” Marco might have been troubled by this development, had he known of it, or, indeed, if it actually occurred. Documents from the era tell a contradictory tale. If Niccolò proceeded with his nuptials, he immediately started his new family, which would eventually consist of three sons.

  In Genoa, Marco Polo and Rustichello continued to compose their epic, with no idea of their own fate, or that of their remarkable literary collaboration.

  ON MAY 25, 1299, Genoa and Venice ended hostilities by agreeing to a “perpetual peace.” After years of conflict, the two city-states had fought to a draw, much to everyone’s relief. Neither side had to pay reparations, and few recalled what had sparked the battles in the first place—pride, perhaps.

  Three months later, on August 28, Marco Polo and his collaborator, Rustichello of Pisa, won their freedom fro
m the Genoese prison in which they had languished. Marco promptly returned to Venice; Rustichello, his task completed, dropped from view. The Venetian was forty-five years old, and he was ready at last to take his place in the Polo family hierarchy. After the dreary months of confinement, Venice appeared as a seductive haven, not as enticing as the glories and excesses of the Mongols, perhaps, but safer than any place he had known since embarking on his travels as a very young man.

  In his absence, family members had improved their standard of living and social status. They had bought a tidy, elegant palazzo, complete with courtyard and tower, in the fashionable San Giovanni Crisostomo neighborhood. It was here that Marco would live out the rest of his years. Exactly how the Polo family financed their impressive new home is a matter of speculation; it is possible they invested the profits from their trading business, but the suspicion lingers that they paid for it with the rubies and sapphires that they had brought back to Venice.

  Marco’s place in Venetian society was secure, his fortune intact. And once again his elders raised the question of an advantageous marriage—not to the exotic Indian or Mongol princess of his daydreams, but to a woman of a Venetian family equivalent to the Polos in status. After all the mating customs and behaviors he had witnessed in Asia, the thought of marital monogamy may not have been entirely welcome. Nevertheless, a match was arranged in 1300.

  MARCO’S PROSPECTIVE BRIDE was named Donata, the daughter of a merchant named Vitale Badoèr. Venetian weddings were elaborate affairs, notable for feasting and business arrangements between the two parties. Representatives of the bride and groom formally contracted on the dies desponsationis. On this occasion, the groom made a formal visit to the bride, and, reenacting a ritual handed down from their Roman ancestors, anointed her head. The wedding ceremony itself occurred on the dies nuptiarum, and it was marked by additional rites. In the transductio ad domum, the groom escorted the bride to his home for the first time, to the accompaniment of celebrating relatives. Afterward, the couple performed the visitatio to the church where the service would occur, highlighted by the benedictio, devoted to the presentation and blessing of the wedding ring. Immediately afterward, the bride produced her repromissa, or dowry, in this case coffers filled with jewelry, linens, damasks, silk, and jewels. Donata’s dowry also included a considerable amount of property, including real estate. (According to a legal document dated March 17, 1312, Donata’s uncle liquidated her dowry for her husband’s benefit.)

  Venetian wedding tradition prescribed that eight days after the ceremony the bride pay a visit to her father’s house; known as the reverentalia, the visit was marked by another feast, and presents were distributed to the guests. With this observance, Marco and Donata’s formal wedding rites concluded.

  AFTER MARRYING so late in life, Marco Polo behaved in accordance with traditional Venetian life. In rapid succession, he and his wife welcomed three daughters into the world: Fantina, Bellela, and Moreta (the names, common in Venice, frequently appeared in legal documents with variant spellings). His father had died at some point before 1300, when a record referred to him as “the late” Niccolò Polo, but the precise date of death is unknown. Although Marco alone is remembered for his travels, the elder Polo’s career in exploration was perhaps even more extraordinary than his son’s, for Niccolò completed not just one but two round-trip expeditions to the court of Kublai Khan.

  Although Marco gave his father and his equally adventurous uncle Maffeo scant attention in the Travels, and often seemed eager to take all the credit for their joint endeavors, he did pay respect to his father in Venice. “His father being dead,” according to Ramusio, “he, as befits a good and pious son, caused to be made for him a tomb that was very much honored for the conditions of those times, which was a sarcophagus of living stone that may be seen to this day”—Ramusio was writing 250 years later—“placed under the portico that is before the Church of San Lorenzo of this city, on the right-hand side as one enters, with such inscription as indicates that it is the tomb of Messer Niccolò Polo.”

  AFTER NICCOLÒ’S DEATH, Marco and his uncle Maffeo continued to trade profitably, but their travels had come to an end. It is likely they never went farther than the Venetian province of Dalmatia. As for Marco, he never again set foot on the Silk Road, nor did he return to Asia and its sense of promise, magic, and danger. It seems that prosperity instilled caution to the point of respectability. He remained tethered to Venice, domiciled with his wife and daughters, his uncle Maffeo, and other family members in a large, crowded household, where they weathered the political storms assailing the Republic.

  IN 1300, irate citizens greeted the new century by mounting a rebellion against the doge, Pietro Gradenigo. Venetian forces subdued it, and the bodies of the upstart leader, Marin Bocconio, and ten of his followers swung from gibbets erected in Piazza San Marco, as a stark warning to others who might have entertained similar notions.

  In time, Venice recovered a measure of economic stability and capitalized on the misfortune of its rivals. Talented weavers from Lucca exchanged the conflicts of their home for the promise of Venice, quickly finding a place for their looms near the Rialto. As a result of this migration, Venetian silks and velvets became celebrated for their rich texture and vibrant color; guilds enforced high standards, and sub-standard goods were publicly burned.

  Venetian business practices, long the most aggressive and innovative in Europe, continued to evolve. For centuries, merchants such as the Polos had relied on barter for their transactions, usually trading gems and fabric for goods. But during his troubled reign as doge (1280–1289), Giovanni Dandolo had urged Venice to adopt the financial symbol for which she eventually became known throughout the world: the gold ducat. Ducats had been around for some time, but Dandolo raised the monetary unit to a new standard of quality, declaring, “It must be made to the greatest possible fineness, like to the florin, only better.” The florin was the commercial symbol of rival Florence, but it was soon eclipsed by the Venetian ducat. The name of the Venetian mint, the Zecca, that produced these valuable ducats was derived from the Arabic sikkah, denoting a stamp or seal, and ducats were often called zecchini (the basis of the word “sequin”). The ducat was beautiful to behold, heavy and gleaming. The obverse was adorned with an image of the doge kneeling before Saint Mark, and the reverse with one of Jesus. Henceforth, merchants such as the Polos tallied their fortunes in ducats rather than gems.

  DESPITE MARCO’S eventual embrace of Venetian life and customs, there remain tantalizing suggestions that he never gave up his Asian obsessions.

  Wherever he went, Marco carried manuscript copies of his travel narrative. He talked constantly of his adventures, and on occasion gave a copy of the narrative to an important noble, who would, Marco hoped, preserve it in his library for safekeeping. The interest or indulgence of a wealthy patron was the only way—aside from storing a copy in a monastery—Marco could be assured that his stories would outlive him. The inscription on one very early manuscript indicates that he presented it to a “Monseigneur Thiebault, chevalier, seigneur de Cepoy” in August 1307. According to the inscription, the knight, in Venice on behalf of Charles of Valois, the king of Aragon, requested a manuscript from its author, and one can imagine that Marco was only too glad to comply.

  All the while, the Republic’s long-standing feud with the Church was fraying the delicate fabric of economic life. On March 27, 1309, the Church issued another punitive papal bull, this one far more serious than the earlier one. Trying to teach the unruly city a lesson for all time, the Church excommunicated the Republic and its citizens. All of Venice’s treaties were declared void—a potentially disastrous blow to its trade relationships. Venetian properties beyond the lagoon were subject to seizure by the Church. Christians everywhere were forbidden to trade with Venice. Banks, ships, factories, storehouses, and trading posts with Venetian interests in foreign lands reportedly were burned.

  At first, Venetians, toughened in conflict, took the
latest uproar in stride, but when their soldiers fell prey to disease, the Republic’s enemies decimated its fleet. La Serenissima seemed to face the end of her long reign. Even the self-confidence of the Venetian merchant aristocracy crumbled, and the doge, Pietro Gradenigo, humbly dispatched a mission to Pope Clement V, now in Avignon, to seek forgiveness. The gesture succeeded, and the excommunication of Venice ended. Nevertheless, the doge fell into disrepute with the citizens of the Republic.

  THERE WAS ANOTHER whiff of rebellion in the air, as a conspiracy of nobles sought to remove Gradenigo from power. Their plan was bold: on the morning of June 15, 1310, they would storm the Piazza San Marco, kill the doge, and then slaughter his closest aides. Fortunately for the stability of the Republic, the weather refused to cooperate. A violent storm blew up, lashing the lagoon with rain and thunder, as if to warn of the awful deed to come. Street thugs chanting “Morte al doge Gradenigo!” could barely hear themselves and scattered under the onslaught of foul weather. Amid the ensuing chaos, the doge’s guard learned of the uprising and attacked at least one hostile group, driving them off.

  The rebels suffered another disaster from a most unlikely source. As Bajamonte Tiepolo, one of the leaders, led a vicious mob near the Rialto, the racket infuriated one of the residents, a woman named Giustina Rosso, who opened her window, seized a heavy pot planted with carnations, and hurled it straight at Tiepolo. The missile almost found its target; Tiepolo was spared, but his standard bearer fell to the wet pavement, lifeless, his skull shattered by the flower pot. Tiepolo’s rabble suddenly panicked, as enraged residents hurled one object after another at their exposed heads. The rebels scattered, leaving Tiepolo with no choice but to surrender and bargain for his life. Luckily for him, he managed to negotiate banishment to Dalmatia for four years, while others paid for their rebellion with their lives.