August 7, 2025 • 48 mins
He's one of the most popular figures in all of medieval history, and his book was a bestseller for literally centuries. So what do we know about the life and times of Marco Polo? This week, Danièle speaks with Sharon Kinoshita about why Marco travelled so far, what sort of detail he wanted to share with his readers, and what was going on in the world around him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred and one
of the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host Danielle Sebolski. He's
one of the most popular figures in all of medieval
(00:23):
history and his book was a bestseller for literally centuries.
I'm speaking, of course, about the original man in motion,
Marco Polo. It's through his book that thousands of people
got to know the world beyond Europe with maybe a
teensy bit of poetic license. So what do we know
about the life and times of the man himself? This
(00:45):
week I spoke with doctor Sharon Kinoshita about the life
and stories of Marco Polo. Sharon is Distinguished Professor of
Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the
author of Medieval Boundaries, rethinking difference in Old French literature.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
She's also the co author and co editor of many
other works, including A Companion to Mediterranean History and Maria France,
A Critical Companion. Sharon really got to know Marco Polo
when she translated his work entitled A Description of the World.
Her new book is Marco Polo and His World. Our
(01:20):
conversation on why Marco traveled so far? What sort of
detail he wanted to share with his readers, and what
was going on in the world around him is coming
up right after this. Well, welcome Sharon to talk about
Marco Polo. I've been doing this podcast for six years
and I haven't had an episode dedicated to Marco Polo,
(01:42):
so it is about time. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, it's about time, and I'm a longtime listener, so
I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Are you really? That's wonderful. Thank you, that's nice. You
stuck it out. That's good to hear. So let's just
jump in, starting at the beginning. Who is Marco Polo?
What time are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Marco Polo is a Venetian merchant who happened to go
to Asia, which is not unusual for Venetian merchants of
his time, but he happened to record a book about it,
so this is what makes him unique to history. I
like to think of his dates as basically the second
half of the thirteenth century. He was born in twelve
(02:27):
fifty four in Venice. He left for the East in
about twelve seventy twelve seventy one. He returned in about
twelve ninety five, and he composed the book around twelve
ninety eight, So that gives us a good half century,
which furnishes a convenient window for focusing in on the
(02:47):
very broad stretch of geography that he covers in his book.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Right, and when he goes eastward, he is about seventeen
years old, and he goes with his dad and an uncle.
I think, right, so why do they want to take
him on this journey? Because it is a long way
where they're going.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's a long way. But Venetian merchants really were often
family affairs. And actually when his father and uncle they
had made a previous journey to the east and had
gotten to know the great Khan Kublai, they had spent
some time at his court, and they were charged by
him to return to the Latin West, and you know,
(03:27):
they had various errands and messages, for example, for the Pope.
So I think that when they set out again, and
Marco was by this time about seventeen years old, it
was just a natural step for them to take the
young Marco with him, because it was part of the apprenticeship.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Do you get the impression, I mean, we have to
speculate quite a lot here, But from the adventures that
he had, do you get the impression that this was
something he was willing to go on, a journey he
wanted to go on and was kind of excited about
at the outset.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
We have no idea, because the book says very little
about Marco personally. My first concern is always to undo
the impression that this is a travel narrative, because the
title that he gives it is a description of the world. Actually,
the first person adventurous, step by step, station by station
(04:21):
travels figure very very little in the text. But I
will say that it was quite common for Venetian merchants
to send their adolescent or young sons to various outposts
around the eastern Mediterranean, in particular to do a kind
of apprenticeship in how not only how the family business worked,
(04:43):
but how Venetian commerce worked. So although Marco ended up
going let's say, many miles farther than most of his compatriots,
I think the general principle would have been quite familiar
to him. Right.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Well, that's this question because one of the things that's
remarked upon, or that he reports is remarked upon, is
how quickly he picks up the language is and how
interested he is in everything that he's seeing, And so
that makes me think maybe he was picking up these
skills in part out of interest, although in part just
good business sense.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
He seems to have had an unusual facility for languages,
or at least, you know, in his own recounting he does.
But if you think about the way that merchants work,
they depend on being able to communicate with people, especially
long distance merchants dealing in luxury goods. They depends on
being able to communicate with foreign interlocutors. So you know,
(05:41):
of course there's a whole infrastructure of translators, often called
dragomants in the Middle Ages. But you know, the more
you can communicate directly, the more you're sure of the
information that you're receiving. So I think it wouldn't have
been unusual for merchants in general to have commanded more
(06:02):
than one language, you know, at least a working version
the stuff that you need for travel and for trade.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yes, and if you're going to have that person, as
you say, be a member of the family, even better
because then you can keep the trade secrets within the family.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So he seems to have been picking up language has
been interested in all this stuff, but the idea of
writing a book may not have actually happened except for
a chance meeting, right.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yes, a chance meeting. So Marco returned with his father
and uncle to Venice in around twelve ninety five. He's
in his mid forties by now, and very soon though,
by the year twelve ninety eight, he finds himself in
prison in the city of Genoa, which is the huge
trade rival of Venice throughout the latter part of the
(06:51):
Middle Ages. So while he was in Genoa he happened.
We don't know the circumstances, but he was thrown together
with a piece of probably a notary but also a
composer of our theory and romance named Rustiquello Rusticuello of Pisa,
and so Rusticullo is actually the first person recorder of
(07:14):
what Marco has to tell him. And so it was
this strange confluence of Marco's experiences, Rusticlo's let's say it's
not literary talents at least his scribal talents, and the
happenstance that they're being thrown together in Genoese captivity that
(07:34):
results in the book that we have now.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It's so interesting when you see these moments in history
where if they hadn't shared basically a jail cell, then
this would never have happened. And when you think about
that and the impact in the wide spread of this book,
it just seems incredible that we almost missed it. But
that is history for you.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
So when you've started out talking about Marco Polo in
your book, your book is actually called Marco Polo and
His World, and so we're talking sort of around the
book with the book in dialogue with it. And one
of the places that you started for your book was
with these Italian city states. So why was that important
to you in the narrative that you were trying to build.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Well famously, So if you think of Marco the Merchant
of Venice, Rusticuello described from Pisa in Genoa in captivity.
We tend to lump those three cities together today as oh,
three great tourist sites in northern Italy. But Italy, you know, famously,
does not exist as a nation until the nineteenth century,
(08:41):
and certainly in the Middle Ages it was this patchwork
of well the papal states, but then maritime republics, kingdoms,
et cetera, and Venice and Genoa in particular were fierce
rivals over the maritime trade extending throughout the Mediterranean into
the Black Sea North Africa, and as we get into
(09:05):
the era of the Mongols starting to penetrate into western
and Central Asia. So I thought it was interesting to
give a little sketch of each of the three maritime republics,
just to emphasize their differences, and just to emphasize how
interesting the kind of peculiar slant that each one of
(09:28):
them has. And I also have to say that for
me working on these various medieval questions, it's often very
illuminating to visit the places in question. It just gives
you a kind of feel that you know reading a
published text or a manuscript doesn't. And I use in
the book, I use the three great buildings of the
(09:51):
different cities, so San Marco in Venice and the Cathedrals
of Pisa in Genoa, very different in style, and those
speak to different histories and different kinds of civic self representation,
the way they wanted to present themselves to the world.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Well, I think this is a really wise strategy to
take because one of the things that Marco will talk
about in his book of the Description of the world,
he's going to talk about not only the cities that
he sees, but also the ceremonies that he sees. And
this is the point that you bring up, how is
he comparing these things? And then how's he telling people
about them? Because the way we're raised may seem invisible
(10:30):
to us and tail were placed in a different spot, right.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Absolutely, yeah, And I think that you know, leaving its
Venice at seventeen and returning in his mid forties, he
would have been I like to say, you know, as
Mongolian as Venetian by the time he comes home.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
That makes so much sense, And that he leaves when
he's not quite twenty and then he spends another two
decades among the Mongols. So yeah, he'd be picking up
all that stuff not just to make life smoother while
he's there, but because it's also genuinely cool and interesting.
So let's talk about the Mongols. Then his dad has
been sent back by kouble I Khan, and then Marco
(11:12):
goes back to the court of Kubl Kon. So who
who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Kubl Kon is the third generation of the Mongols. He's
the grandson of the Great conquered Jinghis Khan. The Mongols
conquered broad swaths of Asia, basically from the Pacific Ocean
into eastern Europe. It's such a vast territory that the
control of all this territory and the peoples that inhabit
(11:41):
them get kind of split up over the generations. So
Kublai is the guy that, after a bunch of you know,
infighting with some brothers and cousins, is acclaimed great Khan
that is leader of h or you know, nominal head
of the family and the empire that by then rule.
(12:01):
But he's also located in the east, so the Mongols
have as part of their conquest gone east as well
as west. So he's displaced the rulers of northern China.
So he sets out to construct a new capital for himself.
The Mongols who are of course nomads, so they have
(12:22):
seasonal capitals, especially in Central Asia. But having conquered this
great sedentary empire of northern China, he you know, wants
a sedentary capital, so he builds one for himself in
what is going to become eventually Beijing. Marco calls it Kanbalik,
which represents the Turkic and Mongolian wording, for you know,
(12:45):
the city of the Khan. In Chinese it's called Dadu,
the Great Capital, and then again modern Beijing.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And what was it that Marco found so striking about
this city? Because he starts talking about cities and this
is an amazing city for him. What did he find
and striking about it?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
He found everything associated with the Great Khan very striking
and very impressive. But you know, you only have to
think of Venice for those of your listeners who are
familiar with that, and think of the winding canals, the
narrow lanes, you know, and it's a relatively compact city.
Chinese capitals, on the other hand, are laid out on
(13:23):
great grid plans, and so you have straight streets, you
have a rectangular wall surrounding the hole. But then the
wall also encompasses gardens, grazing pasture, land, et cetera, et cetera.
So both in scale and in conception, you know, urban design,
this would have been like nothing that anyone in the
(13:44):
West would have been familiar with. So I think just
the fascination of the resources that the Great Khan commanded
and the way that Kanbalik stood as this incarnation of
imperial power would have just been very resonant for Marco
and something he wanted to convey to his audience.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yes, and one of the things that you have in
your book is a whole lot of illustrations. Is an
absolutely beautiful book, and you have an illustration of Venice,
and then you have an illustration of the great con City,
and so these things are just you can see the
contrast within your book. It would have been stunningly obvious
to anybody who is visiting from Europe, especially to see
(14:30):
something that is so laid out realistrait the way it
is in this map.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Absolutely, and I think you know today we always take
the West as a standard of comparison. So later I
speak about one of the Riverine ports, and which is
today often called the Venice of the East. In Marco
Polo century, no one would have thought to do that.
I mean, you know, Venice and the cities and phenomena
(14:56):
of Latin Europe would have been just pale shadows of
the scale and the grandeur of what Marco was uncovering
in the Mongol Empire.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Well, this is a really good point that you're making
in that Marco was trying to convey this to people
who have only seen the things that he saw growing
up in Venice, and he's trying to say, you have
never seen anything like this before. And when he talks
about the Great Khan, he's trying to really emphasize there
is nobody like him. There has never been anyone like him.
(15:28):
So this is something that you bring up in the
book as something you want to emphasize as well. So
tell us about his impression of this person.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
There's an interesting contrast between his physical description of the
Great Khan, which he's kind of a middling sized guy,
pleasant face, you know, regular features, but his power is
the Great Khan. Marco's language, or rather Rustichello's language, is
that of thirteenth century French prose, which is, you know,
(15:57):
exactly that of the Arthurian pros amounts is like the
Quest for the Holy Grail or the death of King Arthur.
And it's a prose that's for you know, modern years,
a little bit clunky, tends to be highly repetitive, and
doesn't shy away from exaggeration. So in Marco's words, in
(16:18):
Mistikello's version, Gooble Icon is the greatest of all the
great rulers that have ever ruled the earth, and no
one is to be compared to him since the time
of Adam, our first father. And I note that because
in medieval French epic and romance, which is actually my
original field, you will see heroes and knights get compared
(16:42):
to each other, you know, as brave as Roland, or
as you know mighty as Alexander or Caesar, et cetera,
et cetera. But none of those standards of comparisons can
even enter the same conversation as cooble Icon. So he's
all by himself, and Marco just leads with that and
(17:03):
never allows us to forget it.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I mean, he's not wrong, He's not wrong. Kubul Icon
is in a category all to himself. And so maybe
it's worth asking right now, what does Marco's take on
Kubuli as a person, in that he's coming from a
very Christian part of the world, where he's growing up
in a place where it is just a huge part
(17:26):
of everybody's lifestyle. So coming into Kubuli Khan's court as
somebody has come from Christian Europe, what's your take on
how Marco views him like? Does he view him like well,
he's not going to be saved. It's not really worth
talking about his soul. He's wrong in his belief. Is
this the type of thing that we're seeing or not
at all?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Not at all. The first thing to understand is that Marco,
as I said, grows up in a merchant family. Now,
much of our impression of the European Middle Ages is
formed through the writings of churchmen, because they're the ones
who wrote, and they're the ones whose writings survive. So
of course they have a certain way that they want
(18:06):
to represent the world, which emphasizes faith, spirituality, orthodoxy, et cetera,
et cetera. Merchants have quite a different set of interests.
They tow the line as much as they can or
need to, but they also have a more capacious way
of thinking about and interacting with people who are not
(18:28):
of their faith. And this begins even closer to home. So,
for example, Marco's father and uncle, when they set out
on their first journey, they set out not from Venice
but from Constantinople, which at that moment is under Latin rule.
But you know, obviously it's the center of the old
Byzantine Empire, and so you have not only Greek Orthodox Christians,
(18:53):
but Christians of various different Eastern churches, and as well
you have Muslims, Jews, etc. So the Venetians, just in
their normal dealings around the Mediterranean, are accustomed to dealing
with people who are not of the same profession as
they are. But then when Marco gets into Central Asia,
(19:14):
there are many Christians there, including members of the Great
Khan's family, but they belong to the Church of the East,
or what commonly are called Nestorian Christians. Earlier Friars who
have ventured into Mongol lands tend to have kind of
disapproving comments about how misguided these Nestorian Christians are. Marco's
(19:37):
really not interested in that type of thing, but he's
meeting people of all different religions. He does single out
different kinds of Christians, Saracens which is the generic medieval
Latin term for Muslims, and then Jews. Everyone outside that
he calls idolators. So it can sound othering from our
(19:58):
point of view because it compasses you know, Buddhists, Taoists,
and then later in South Asia Hindus, etc. But rarely
is there ever any derogatory connotation attached to them. It's
just an identifier. This is their religion. Here are some
of their practices. And in the course of his book,
(20:20):
Marco often reports on some kind of astonishing practices from
Latin Christian point of view, but he describes it with
an almost anthropological detachment. And I would say particularly when
he describes the several cultures in which the dead are cremated,
because obviously this would be horrific from a Latin Christian
(20:41):
point of view, and yet for Marco, this is how
they do it, this is the ritual attached to it, etc.
So the Mongols, too are known to be fairly ecumenical
in their approach to peoples of different faiths. I think
the principle sort of being, you know, as long as
you're going to patrip and confer blessings, the more the better. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I do think it's worth bringing this out because, as
you say, it is so different from the reports that
you're getting back from people who are attached, fully attached
to the church. They are part of the clergy instead
of merchants. So this is something that is noteworthy in
Marco Pulow's account of his adventures. Let's say, so when
he is describing the places that he comes across. He's
(21:27):
doing this from his standpoint as a merchant, right, so
tell us what he thinks everyone should know about certain cities,
because it's not necessarily what somebody who's sending someone else
on a vacation to those cities needs to know.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Absolutely not. His description of many cities and provinces is
quite formulaic. So he starts out, He'll say, who rules
this place, and most of the places he describes are
under the rule of the Great Khan. What kind of
currency they use payer money in the Mongol Empire, what
their religion is, whether they are Saracens or idolaters or mixed,
(22:03):
et cetera. And especially he's interested in commodities, and these
are both natural commodities, things that are grown there, minerals
that are extracted. How merchants are treated, this is very important,
and what facilities there might be for merchants now in
some of the larger cities of China, Northern China, but
(22:25):
especially southern China, which is conquered by the Mongols after
the Polos reach the east. Marco's very interested in the
amount of tax revenue that flows into the coffers of
the Great Khan. From import and export duties, so he'll
talk about, you know, the great riches and the commodities
(22:48):
that get taxed.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Well, this is making me wonder because Marco's coming on
this as a merchant rooster, Callo's coming at it as
somebody who writes for a living. Do you think that
they are at cross purposes here? Do you think that
Mark Go's like, here's what people really want to know,
and Rustakelo is like, actually, here's what people really want
to know. Do you think that maybe they are trying
to write two different books at the same time.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
That's a good question. I think that there are attached
to various cities, not really in the Mongol Empire, but
sort of around the fringes. Often little stories attached to
local legends, local holy people, saints lives. There are not
a lot of miracles in the course of this book,
but occasionally there's you know, some sort of unusual historical
(23:34):
happenstance attached to a location, a city, a monastery of province.
So those will be inserted, and it's difficult to know
how much you can see Rustikello's hand in some of
those insertions. But on the other hand, although you know
the only way we know of Rustikelo apart from this
book is from this really kind of long and I
(23:57):
always say baggy ar Theory and Romance that he authored.
Chances are he was trained as a notary, so in
that case, you know, he too would have made his
living from recording the kinds of details that Marco was
also interested in.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Right well, I mean this is coming up in my
mind in part because one of the things that you've
sort of set off as its own chapter in your
book is marvels. And so there are things that seem
to be from the real world that you're supposed to
marvel at, and then there are things that are definitely
not from the real world that you're supposed to be
marveling at. So tell us a little bit about the
(24:35):
marvels within this book.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I think one of the most interesting things are versions
of the lives of saints that are recognizable to a
Latin Christian audience, but they're defamiliarized in some strange way.
So we have a version of the Three Magi visiting
the site of the birth of Jesus Christ, but he
(24:59):
tells it the point of view of Persia. So these
really are magi in the Persian sense, and we're told
about the stone that catches fire and the experience from
the point of view of the magi. The other saint
familiar to the West would be Saint Thomas, who famously
was the apostle who, as legends have it, reached India.
(25:22):
So Marco tells about the martyrdom of Saint Thomas and
then the shrine that developed in place. But there Saint
Thomas dies a rather curious death. He's kind of shot
by people who are out hunting peacocks, and he's kind
of a casualty of an arrow gone astray. So we
(25:43):
have the legend of Saint Thomas, and especially about the
miraculous things that happen at the side of his martyrdom.
But on the other hand, the martyrdom itself is kind
of stripped of the kind of Christian significance that you
otherwise would expect to find in a Christian source.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
And one of these ones that might be familiar to
Christians in a different way is the story of the
Buddha as well.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Right, Yeah, the story of the Buddha is very interesting
because versions of the story, like many other medieval legends,
travels actually from the South Asian world, through the Islamic world,
through translated into Persian, Arabic, and then eventually into European languages.
(26:29):
So in the course of the migration of this particular tale,
the story of the Buddha is transformed into the legends
of St. Barlain and Jojosa Fat. So that's a version,
you know, very close to this buddhast story that Marco
tells that would have been familiar, and yet again this
is recoded as the story of the Buddha. In addition,
(26:53):
we're told Marco often links these miracle stories to the
Mongol presence. So we have, for example, the site of
Buddha's footprint on the island of Ceylon, and you have
Kubl Kon taking great interest in the site and hearing
about various relics attached to this place, and really kind
(27:15):
of commanding that relics from this site be brought to him.
So we have holy people from the past, but there
by a kind of centripetal attraction just brought, you know,
magnetically brought into the Mongol sphere of influence.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Well, I love this because it really adds a lot
to a narrative that might otherwise just be list of towns.
Probably has a lot to do with why this book
became popular. And one of the things that you really
have enjoyed from what you've said in the book you
find really charming is that Marco also likes to describe animals.
So can you tell us about some of the animals
(27:55):
that he describes in the book.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
He loves animals. He likes sheep one place where he describes,
you know, these fat tailed sheep that are you know,
the best eating in the world. He loves birds, and
one of the things that distinguishes the way he talks
about fauna in different places is he stresses the difference,
both the difference to be found among, for example, the
(28:19):
birds of a certain place, but also how different they
are from anything that is known back home in Europe.
And they're off the scale, more beautiful, more distinctive, et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, they're delicious, they're cheaper, they're everything you could want
in a bird. One of the descriptions that you have
in your book is of the crocodile as well, And
it took me a minute to figure out what he
was talking about. But when you're trying to describe an
animal that no one back home has ever seen before.
It's a difficult task.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It is. And I should say that Marco and Rusticello,
although we think of them both as Italians, they're writing
in medieval French because that was the language of Italians
who didn't want to write in Latin. So if we
think of what exists in medieval French at this period,
it is stuff like chivalric, romance or epic and so
(29:11):
you can think about the vocabulary associated with those kinds
of stories. So you have a lot of chivalric, feudal,
courtly kinds of vocabulary. Crocodiles don't so much enter into that.
So that you know, there are a lot of phenomena
that Marco and Rusticello are trying to render that simply
are not current in the language that they're using. And
(29:34):
you know, aside from the fact that they are also
non native speakers of Old French. So one of the
things I find charming is the way that Rusticuello uses
quite a simple vocabulary often to describe these things that
no one has ever you know, no one in the
West has ever seen before. So crocodiles don't have claws,
(29:57):
they have nails, you know, there are many occasions of
this sort of simple vocabulary. It's almost like a kindergarten
vocabulary being extended to cover the off the chart experiences
that Marco is relating.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It would be so difficult to describe any creature that
you hadn't seen every day, at least for me trying
to describe what a crocodile looks like, I probably would
have come up with those words, especially if I was
trying to do it in French, which is not my
first language either. So those are charming moments within the book.
But speaking of French being of contemporary experiences, one of
(30:37):
the things that is different about your book from Marco's
book is you're talking about near the end of your
book other people who are contemporaneous with him, to compare them.
So why was this important to you?
Speaker 2 (30:49):
So my expertise in French is basically twelfth and thirteenth century,
and so here with Marco Polo, I was trying to
extend my family with Marco Polo's world stretching all the
way through Asia, and so it's an enormous amount of
material to deal with, and in doing the research, I
(31:10):
came across people or phenomena I had been familiar with
without necessarily being able to place them in the thirteenth century.
So just one of the ways I like to think
is to you know, use a kind of timeline. And
so I begin the book by saying, well, Jingis Khan
and Saint Francis of ASSIZI die within one year of
(31:33):
each other, and that just gives you some mental anchors
to try to think about them. And when they died,
you know, the Mongols and the Franciscans occupied totally different worlds.
Within a couple decades, Franciscans were traveling to the court
of the Great Khan, and so using dates like this,
(31:53):
just in the process of you know, trying to find
especially literary and cultural as opposed to political figures who
belonged in this late thirteenth century, I was several times
surprised by, oh, look, this person. Not only were they
a contemporary, but they were born and died within a
(32:14):
year or two either way of Marco Polo. So I
just thought it was an interesting way of bringing together
your kind of proverbial dinner party of folks that were
alive at the same time, and just the varied experiences
that they had of this vast duration world would help
to fill in some of the gaps of the century
(32:36):
that often is not well documented in a kind of
world historical sense.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Well, I think that this is so important, and like you,
that's so helpful for me to anchor people within time,
like this person is a contemporary of this person. It
just illuminates things exponentially. So who were the figures that
you decided to play against? Marco Polo? For the people
who haven't yet read the book, the.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Central figure is a Chinese painter named Jia mung Fu.
He is very interesting because he belongs to the imperial
family of the Southern Sung, which is the empire that
Kublai conquered after the Polos had arrived in China. So
you can imagine he, by virtue of being a member
(33:22):
of the imperial family, he would have been expected to
assume a high place in the imperial administration. And now
he's a conquered subject, he's a refugee. So he originally
flees back to his family estates in the country and
devotes himself to a life of the literati, which involves painting, poetry, calligraphy,
(33:44):
fine arts, you know. But eventually he's lured into Mongol service,
and he rises quite high in the administration, both because
he's a kind of a convenient showpiece, but also because
he's quite talented, and so he's an extraordinary figure in
Chinese cultural history. So he's exactly the same age as Marco,
(34:07):
but he arrives at the Court of the Great con
about ten years later because you know, he's been holding back,
and he leaves a remarkable set of paintings, including you know,
works scrolls that are for example, in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York and in major museums around
the world. His wife is also one of the first
(34:30):
known female painters and poets. So just looking at the
life of Jean mung Fu, his astonishing career, gives us
also a brief glimpse, a little open window onto female experience.
Of the same time, the second person is someone who
Marco Polo would not have encountered at all, because he
(34:52):
was a poet, polymath really in the Delhi Sultanate, which
had recently been established in South Asia. But this is
a guy who composed works mainly in Persian but also
in Hindavi, which is the vernacular language which eventually would
become the source of both Hindi and Urdu. And one
(35:14):
of the things I liked about him is that he
served several sultans of Delhi, but he also wrote a
book just praising India. Now he's praising India under the
rule of Muslims, but he's also praising the accomplishments associated
with non Muslims, with people we would call Hindus. So
(35:36):
again it gives you a sense of the capaciousness of
attitude across religions in this thirteenth century world. The third
person who is hardest to trace in the historical record
is the illegitimate daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, who, as
is the fate of daughters in the Middle Ages, gets
(35:58):
given to litified political alliances. But she's given to the
Ilkhan or the kind of subordinate Khan of Mongol Prussia,
who happens to be a it's either a great nephew
or a great great nephew of Kublai I can never remember.
But she spends a decade or more, as you know,
(36:18):
one of the wives of the Ilkhan of Prussia, and
then after he dies, she returns to Constantinople, where she
founds a monastery, which still is known informally in tourist
guides as Saint Mary of the Mongols. So yeah, again
she's harder to trace. But in the Mongol world, women
(36:38):
traditionally wield much more power than they do in the
Latin Christian world, so she would have been quite a
prominent figure while she was one of the hatuns, one
of the khan's wives in Persia.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yes, it's too bad we don't know more about her,
and I can feel you in the book reaching for
everything we could possibly know about her, But yes, I ain't.
Mary of the Mongols is a very memorable name for
a building. So as we get to the end, what
was the reception of this book at its own moment
(37:11):
in history? And then what was the reception of the
book later? Because a lot of people have heard about
this book now, But as with many things, maybe it
wasn't super popular when it first came out. What's your
impression of its popularity within its own time.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Well, to judge by the number of manuscripts, it was
really a kind of bestseller, not immediately, but going into
the fourteenth century and later. However, it mainly spread in
Latin translation, so not unusually for medieval texts. This text
was copied translated, and no two copies or you know,
(37:49):
virtually no two copies are alike. Because the Latin translation
was done by Dominicans for the use of Dominican Friars
and other Latin Christians. They did not hold back in
making snide comments about religious practices of non Christians, and
of course their interest in what might be said about
(38:10):
places in Central and East Asia was completely different from
the original version of the mercantile kind of sphere. So
a lot of what we know about Marco Polo's travels,
and you can just tell by the name that the
work has been reinterpreted for the modern world comes from both,
(38:32):
you know, versions of the Latin which is then kind
of back translated into a number of vernacular languages, and
also the fact that once we hit the age of Exploration,
you know, the fourteen nineties up through the mid fifteen hundreds,
when Europeans then are venturing out and you know, sailing
east or west to try to find new routes to China,
(38:56):
they're very interested in Marco Polo's books. So famously Columbus
had a copy of I think one of the Latin
versions the Dominican versions that he was taking with him.
So then it becomes a kind of manual or aspirational
guide for those people looking for routes to the Far East,
(39:18):
but for other kinds of purposes, for a kind of
trade that is no longer as cooperative as it had
been in the thirteenth century. And then, you know, in
the modern world, and especially in the last few decades,
with the prominence of let's say, Edward Saied's orientalism and
the rise of colonial and post colonial critique, there's been
(39:42):
a lot of effort to kind of pinpoint Marco Polo
as a point of origin for European Eurocentric views of Asia.
And so part of what I've been trying to do
in returning first of all to the earliest known copy
and then in trying to build out the context on
that copy, is to say that again, as I said,
(40:03):
to see anything from a Eurocentric view in the late
thirteenth century would have been ludicrous, just because you know,
Europe did not occupy the position of military, political, or
economic power on which nineteenth and twentieth century orientalizing views
of Asia rest.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, it's interesting that this kind of became the legacy
of the book in that Marco was deliberately trying to say,
we're not the best, these guys are the best.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Have you seen this?
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Because you will not believe what it's like. And so
it's interesting that in its afterlife it is used as
a way of orientalizing that view of Asia, because this
is not what he set out to do at all.
Have I got that right?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Absolutely? And again I think a lot depends on later translations,
so particularly the clerical translations. And then in the mid
sixties century there was an Italian print translation which contains
material that the printer swears is authentic, but it is
found in no other text, but you know, it suits
(41:12):
the times of the mid sixteenth century, and it's published
in a series with other kinds of exploration narratives, so
the book gets you know, recoded. So there's a lot
of additional material not found in the earliest version that
I've worked on. And then also, you know, modern critics
coming at it from postcolonial or other kinds of views,
(41:34):
or you know, not above cherry picking sometimes those particular
examples that are going to illuminate that particular point of view.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think that who
among us can't be accused of cherry picking at times,
so you could see it happening. Yes, yes, right, So
for people who have never come across Marco Polo's book,
and hopefully they find a good translation that is closed
you when he was actually writing it or dictating it.
(42:05):
What do you think people should look for? Like, what
do you say to people when they're first looking at it?
What is so cool about this book that makes you
want to read it again and again?
Speaker 2 (42:14):
I think for me it's the way that it opens
up this world that is intrinsically fascinating. In twenty sixteen,
I actually published a translation of the earliest known manuscript,
which is in French or Franco Italian, and what was
important to me was to annotate the various places and
(42:37):
phenomena that Marco and Rwstaquillo described to the best of
what I was able to find in secondary scholarship over
a decade ago. Now now the scholarship has been just
galloping apace, and what we can know now about this
world is really quite a bit broader than what I
was able to encode in this twenty sixth translation. But
(43:01):
I would hope that people would be tempted to look
at my translation of Marco Polo's description of the world
for the introduction, where I lay out some of the
reasons why I think the way it's been talked about
is a little bit in misleading, but mostly for the footnotes,
just to discover the wonder of for example, the way
(43:22):
the Great con has when he goes on hunting expeditions.
They're like lost and found officers. So if your falcon
goes astray, you can go to this guy and hope
to recover your falcon or your lost weapons, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Well, I love that. I love all of the cool
little details that you can find in a book such
as this. So I want to thank you so much
for coming on and telling us all about Marco Polo,
because it is a fascinating book and I hope that
more people will read it. So thank you so much
Sharon for coming on and telling us all about it.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Thank you, Danielle.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
To find out more about Sharon's work, you can visit
page on Academia dot edu. Her new book is Marco
Polo and His World. Before we Go, Here's Peter from
Medievalist not to tell us what's on the website, what's
going on?
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Peter.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Hey, Hey, So since we last talked, there's been a
bloody conflict that erupted between Thailand and Cambodia, and amazingly,
it actually centers on medieval temples sites which date back
to the twelfth and thirteenth century were built by the
Khmer Empire, and both countries have claims to them historical
claims as well as the surrounding land, and for decades
(44:35):
there's been a border dispute and it, unfortunately, it led
to a lot of violence, with at least thirty five
people killed and tens of thousands forced to flee. So
that's my unfortunate news.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yes, well, I mean it just goes to show how
the medieval past is never actually in the past, it's
always part of the present.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
The latest is that has been a ceasefire announced. We
have on the website. He's just kind of talking about
these sites and why they're considered so important to both countries.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Right, So, at the time that we're recording, there's currently
a ceasefire, but if people want some background on what's
going on there, they can go to medievalis dot net.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Indeed, so we have that, plus we have some much
more fun news which is about two scholars, including one
of your former guests, Seb Falk.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yes, we love Seb here on the Medieval Podcast.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Indeed, indeed. And so they've been able to figure out
some information about the long lost story called the Song
of Wade. It's something that was mentioned in Chaucer's works
a couple of times, but we don't have any surviving text.
Event Fortunately, Seb and his colleague we're able to look
back at this medieval sermon which talks about this work
just briefly. But they found out that previous scholars had
(45:49):
mistranslated a key word which we used to be elves,
and now they know it as wolves.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yes, this is the thing about going back to something.
You might find something like a typo or a mistranslation.
And it's very easy to have something like elves and
wolves when we're talking about Middle English, get confused. So
good on Seb and his colleagues for looking this up
and checking for themselves, because this makes a big difference
to the story.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Yeah, yeah, it's now considered this It must be a
chivalric romance.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Mmmmm.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
And I mean, not only do we love Seb, but
we love cheval romances.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
We do we do, so we have that news plus
a lot more on the website.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Well, thank you Peter for stopping by and telling us
all about it.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Although there is plenty of summer left to enjoy, I
wanted to drop a quick reminder that in September I'll
be teaching my online class Calamity and Change and Introduction
to the fourteenth Century. So if you're interested in learning
with me all about history's best and maybe worst century,
get on Medieval Studies dot thinkivig dot com. I hope
to see you there. In the meantime, my mini series
(46:59):
for Dan Jones is This is History podcast has now
dropped and I hope you've been enjoying it. This is
one of the most tumultuous times in all of French history,
so if you wanted to steal down in a fun
and easy way, I've got you covered. It's called The
Glass King and you can find it on all the
major podcast platforms for everything from Marco Polo to early
(47:22):
Elbowsfollowmidievalist dot Net, on Instagram at medievalist Net or blue
Sky at Medievalists. You can find me Danielle Sabolski across
social media at five min Medievalist or five minute Medievalist,
and you can find my books at all your favorite bookstores.
(47:42):
Our music is by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and
have yourself an amazing day.
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode three hundred and one
of the Medieval Podcast. I'm your host Danielle Sebolski. He's
one of the most popular figures in all of medieval
(00:23):
history and his book was a bestseller for literally centuries.
I'm speaking, of course, about the original man in motion,
Marco Polo. It's through his book that thousands of people
got to know the world beyond Europe with maybe a
teensy bit of poetic license. So what do we know
about the life and times of the man himself? This
(00:45):
week I spoke with doctor Sharon Kinoshita about the life
and stories of Marco Polo. Sharon is Distinguished Professor of
Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the
author of Medieval Boundaries, rethinking difference in Old French literature.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
She's also the co author and co editor of many
other works, including A Companion to Mediterranean History and Maria France,
A Critical Companion. Sharon really got to know Marco Polo
when she translated his work entitled A Description of the World.
Her new book is Marco Polo and His World. Our
(01:20):
conversation on why Marco traveled so far? What sort of
detail he wanted to share with his readers, and what
was going on in the world around him is coming
up right after this. Well, welcome Sharon to talk about
Marco Polo. I've been doing this podcast for six years
and I haven't had an episode dedicated to Marco Polo,
(01:42):
so it is about time. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, it's about time, and I'm a longtime listener, so
I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Are you really? That's wonderful. Thank you, that's nice. You
stuck it out. That's good to hear. So let's just
jump in, starting at the beginning. Who is Marco Polo?
What time are we talking about?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Marco Polo is a Venetian merchant who happened to go
to Asia, which is not unusual for Venetian merchants of
his time, but he happened to record a book about it,
so this is what makes him unique to history. I
like to think of his dates as basically the second
half of the thirteenth century. He was born in twelve
(02:27):
fifty four in Venice. He left for the East in
about twelve seventy twelve seventy one. He returned in about
twelve ninety five, and he composed the book around twelve
ninety eight, So that gives us a good half century,
which furnishes a convenient window for focusing in on the
(02:47):
very broad stretch of geography that he covers in his book.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Right, and when he goes eastward, he is about seventeen
years old, and he goes with his dad and an uncle.
I think, right, so why do they want to take
him on this journey? Because it is a long way
where they're going.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's a long way. But Venetian merchants really were often
family affairs. And actually when his father and uncle they
had made a previous journey to the east and had
gotten to know the great Khan Kublai, they had spent
some time at his court, and they were charged by
him to return to the Latin West, and you know,
(03:27):
they had various errands and messages, for example, for the Pope.
So I think that when they set out again, and
Marco was by this time about seventeen years old, it
was just a natural step for them to take the
young Marco with him, because it was part of the apprenticeship.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Do you get the impression, I mean, we have to
speculate quite a lot here, But from the adventures that
he had, do you get the impression that this was
something he was willing to go on, a journey he
wanted to go on and was kind of excited about
at the outset.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
We have no idea, because the book says very little
about Marco personally. My first concern is always to undo
the impression that this is a travel narrative, because the
title that he gives it is a description of the world. Actually,
the first person adventurous, step by step, station by station
(04:21):
travels figure very very little in the text. But I
will say that it was quite common for Venetian merchants
to send their adolescent or young sons to various outposts
around the eastern Mediterranean, in particular to do a kind
of apprenticeship in how not only how the family business worked,
(04:43):
but how Venetian commerce worked. So although Marco ended up
going let's say, many miles farther than most of his compatriots,
I think the general principle would have been quite familiar
to him. Right.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Well, that's this question because one of the things that's
remarked upon, or that he reports is remarked upon, is
how quickly he picks up the language is and how
interested he is in everything that he's seeing, And so
that makes me think maybe he was picking up these
skills in part out of interest, although in part just
good business sense.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
He seems to have had an unusual facility for languages,
or at least, you know, in his own recounting he does.
But if you think about the way that merchants work,
they depend on being able to communicate with people, especially
long distance merchants dealing in luxury goods. They depends on
being able to communicate with foreign interlocutors. So you know,
(05:41):
of course there's a whole infrastructure of translators, often called
dragomants in the Middle Ages. But you know, the more
you can communicate directly, the more you're sure of the
information that you're receiving. So I think it wouldn't have
been unusual for merchants in general to have commanded more
(06:02):
than one language, you know, at least a working version
the stuff that you need for travel and for trade.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yes, and if you're going to have that person, as
you say, be a member of the family, even better
because then you can keep the trade secrets within the family.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So he seems to have been picking up language has
been interested in all this stuff, but the idea of
writing a book may not have actually happened except for
a chance meeting, right.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yes, a chance meeting. So Marco returned with his father
and uncle to Venice in around twelve ninety five. He's
in his mid forties by now, and very soon though,
by the year twelve ninety eight, he finds himself in
prison in the city of Genoa, which is the huge
trade rival of Venice throughout the latter part of the
(06:51):
Middle Ages. So while he was in Genoa he happened.
We don't know the circumstances, but he was thrown together
with a piece of probably a notary but also a
composer of our theory and romance named Rustiquello Rusticuello of Pisa,
and so Rusticullo is actually the first person recorder of
(07:14):
what Marco has to tell him. And so it was
this strange confluence of Marco's experiences, Rusticlo's let's say it's
not literary talents at least his scribal talents, and the
happenstance that they're being thrown together in Genoese captivity that
(07:34):
results in the book that we have now.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
It's so interesting when you see these moments in history
where if they hadn't shared basically a jail cell, then
this would never have happened. And when you think about
that and the impact in the wide spread of this book,
it just seems incredible that we almost missed it. But
that is history for you.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
So when you've started out talking about Marco Polo in
your book, your book is actually called Marco Polo and
His World, and so we're talking sort of around the
book with the book in dialogue with it. And one
of the places that you started for your book was
with these Italian city states. So why was that important
to you in the narrative that you were trying to build.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Well famously, So if you think of Marco the Merchant
of Venice, Rusticuello described from Pisa in Genoa in captivity.
We tend to lump those three cities together today as oh,
three great tourist sites in northern Italy. But Italy, you know, famously,
does not exist as a nation until the nineteenth century,
(08:41):
and certainly in the Middle Ages it was this patchwork
of well the papal states, but then maritime republics, kingdoms,
et cetera, and Venice and Genoa in particular were fierce
rivals over the maritime trade extending throughout the Mediterranean into
the Black Sea North Africa, and as we get into
(09:05):
the era of the Mongols starting to penetrate into western
and Central Asia. So I thought it was interesting to
give a little sketch of each of the three maritime republics,
just to emphasize their differences, and just to emphasize how
interesting the kind of peculiar slant that each one of
(09:28):
them has. And I also have to say that for
me working on these various medieval questions, it's often very
illuminating to visit the places in question. It just gives
you a kind of feel that you know reading a
published text or a manuscript doesn't. And I use in
the book, I use the three great buildings of the
(09:51):
different cities, so San Marco in Venice and the Cathedrals
of Pisa in Genoa, very different in style, and those
speak to different histories and different kinds of civic self representation,
the way they wanted to present themselves to the world.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Well, I think this is a really wise strategy to
take because one of the things that Marco will talk
about in his book of the Description of the world,
he's going to talk about not only the cities that
he sees, but also the ceremonies that he sees. And
this is the point that you bring up, how is
he comparing these things? And then how's he telling people
about them? Because the way we're raised may seem invisible
(10:30):
to us and tail were placed in a different spot, right.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Absolutely, yeah, And I think that you know, leaving its
Venice at seventeen and returning in his mid forties, he
would have been I like to say, you know, as
Mongolian as Venetian by the time he comes home.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
That makes so much sense, And that he leaves when
he's not quite twenty and then he spends another two
decades among the Mongols. So yeah, he'd be picking up
all that stuff not just to make life smoother while
he's there, but because it's also genuinely cool and interesting.
So let's talk about the Mongols. Then his dad has
been sent back by kouble I Khan, and then Marco
(11:12):
goes back to the court of Kubl Kon. So who
who is this guy?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Kubl Kon is the third generation of the Mongols. He's
the grandson of the Great conquered Jinghis Khan. The Mongols
conquered broad swaths of Asia, basically from the Pacific Ocean
into eastern Europe. It's such a vast territory that the
control of all this territory and the peoples that inhabit
(11:41):
them get kind of split up over the generations. So
Kublai is the guy that, after a bunch of you know,
infighting with some brothers and cousins, is acclaimed great Khan
that is leader of h or you know, nominal head
of the family and the empire that by then rule.
(12:01):
But he's also located in the east, so the Mongols
have as part of their conquest gone east as well
as west. So he's displaced the rulers of northern China.
So he sets out to construct a new capital for himself.
The Mongols who are of course nomads, so they have
(12:22):
seasonal capitals, especially in Central Asia. But having conquered this
great sedentary empire of northern China, he you know, wants
a sedentary capital, so he builds one for himself in
what is going to become eventually Beijing. Marco calls it Kanbalik,
which represents the Turkic and Mongolian wording, for you know,
(12:45):
the city of the Khan. In Chinese it's called Dadu,
the Great Capital, and then again modern Beijing.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
And what was it that Marco found so striking about
this city? Because he starts talking about cities and this
is an amazing city for him. What did he find
and striking about it?
Speaker 2 (13:01):
He found everything associated with the Great Khan very striking
and very impressive. But you know, you only have to
think of Venice for those of your listeners who are
familiar with that, and think of the winding canals, the
narrow lanes, you know, and it's a relatively compact city.
Chinese capitals, on the other hand, are laid out on
(13:23):
great grid plans, and so you have straight streets, you
have a rectangular wall surrounding the hole. But then the
wall also encompasses gardens, grazing pasture, land, et cetera, et cetera.
So both in scale and in conception, you know, urban design,
this would have been like nothing that anyone in the
(13:44):
West would have been familiar with. So I think just
the fascination of the resources that the Great Khan commanded
and the way that Kanbalik stood as this incarnation of
imperial power would have just been very resonant for Marco
and something he wanted to convey to his audience.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Yes, and one of the things that you have in
your book is a whole lot of illustrations. Is an
absolutely beautiful book, and you have an illustration of Venice,
and then you have an illustration of the great con City,
and so these things are just you can see the
contrast within your book. It would have been stunningly obvious
to anybody who is visiting from Europe, especially to see
(14:30):
something that is so laid out realistrait the way it
is in this map.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Absolutely, and I think you know today we always take
the West as a standard of comparison. So later I
speak about one of the Riverine ports, and which is
today often called the Venice of the East. In Marco
Polo century, no one would have thought to do that.
I mean, you know, Venice and the cities and phenomena
(14:56):
of Latin Europe would have been just pale shadows of
the scale and the grandeur of what Marco was uncovering
in the Mongol Empire.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Well, this is a really good point that you're making
in that Marco was trying to convey this to people
who have only seen the things that he saw growing
up in Venice, and he's trying to say, you have
never seen anything like this before. And when he talks
about the Great Khan, he's trying to really emphasize there
is nobody like him. There has never been anyone like him.
(15:28):
So this is something that you bring up in the
book as something you want to emphasize as well. So
tell us about his impression of this person.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
There's an interesting contrast between his physical description of the
Great Khan, which he's kind of a middling sized guy,
pleasant face, you know, regular features, but his power is
the Great Khan. Marco's language, or rather Rustichello's language, is
that of thirteenth century French prose, which is, you know,
(15:57):
exactly that of the Arthurian pros amounts is like the
Quest for the Holy Grail or the death of King Arthur.
And it's a prose that's for you know, modern years,
a little bit clunky, tends to be highly repetitive, and
doesn't shy away from exaggeration. So in Marco's words, in
(16:18):
Mistikello's version, Gooble Icon is the greatest of all the
great rulers that have ever ruled the earth, and no
one is to be compared to him since the time
of Adam, our first father. And I note that because
in medieval French epic and romance, which is actually my
original field, you will see heroes and knights get compared
(16:42):
to each other, you know, as brave as Roland, or
as you know mighty as Alexander or Caesar, et cetera,
et cetera. But none of those standards of comparisons can
even enter the same conversation as cooble Icon. So he's
all by himself, and Marco just leads with that and
(17:03):
never allows us to forget it.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I mean, he's not wrong, He's not wrong. Kubul Icon
is in a category all to himself. And so maybe
it's worth asking right now, what does Marco's take on
Kubuli as a person, in that he's coming from a
very Christian part of the world, where he's growing up
in a place where it is just a huge part
(17:26):
of everybody's lifestyle. So coming into Kubuli Khan's court as
somebody has come from Christian Europe, what's your take on
how Marco views him like? Does he view him like well,
he's not going to be saved. It's not really worth
talking about his soul. He's wrong in his belief. Is
this the type of thing that we're seeing or not
at all?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Not at all. The first thing to understand is that Marco,
as I said, grows up in a merchant family. Now,
much of our impression of the European Middle Ages is
formed through the writings of churchmen, because they're the ones
who wrote, and they're the ones whose writings survive. So
of course they have a certain way that they want
(18:06):
to represent the world, which emphasizes faith, spirituality, orthodoxy, et cetera,
et cetera. Merchants have quite a different set of interests.
They tow the line as much as they can or
need to, but they also have a more capacious way
of thinking about and interacting with people who are not
(18:28):
of their faith. And this begins even closer to home. So,
for example, Marco's father and uncle, when they set out
on their first journey, they set out not from Venice
but from Constantinople, which at that moment is under Latin rule.
But you know, obviously it's the center of the old
Byzantine Empire, and so you have not only Greek Orthodox Christians,
(18:53):
but Christians of various different Eastern churches, and as well
you have Muslims, Jews, etc. So the Venetians, just in
their normal dealings around the Mediterranean, are accustomed to dealing
with people who are not of the same profession as
they are. But then when Marco gets into Central Asia,
(19:14):
there are many Christians there, including members of the Great
Khan's family, but they belong to the Church of the East,
or what commonly are called Nestorian Christians. Earlier Friars who
have ventured into Mongol lands tend to have kind of
disapproving comments about how misguided these Nestorian Christians are. Marco's
(19:37):
really not interested in that type of thing, but he's
meeting people of all different religions. He does single out
different kinds of Christians, Saracens which is the generic medieval
Latin term for Muslims, and then Jews. Everyone outside that
he calls idolators. So it can sound othering from our
(19:58):
point of view because it compasses you know, Buddhists, Taoists,
and then later in South Asia Hindus, etc. But rarely
is there ever any derogatory connotation attached to them. It's
just an identifier. This is their religion. Here are some
of their practices. And in the course of his book,
(20:20):
Marco often reports on some kind of astonishing practices from
Latin Christian point of view, but he describes it with
an almost anthropological detachment. And I would say particularly when
he describes the several cultures in which the dead are cremated,
because obviously this would be horrific from a Latin Christian
(20:41):
point of view, and yet for Marco, this is how
they do it, this is the ritual attached to it, etc.
So the Mongols, too are known to be fairly ecumenical
in their approach to peoples of different faiths. I think
the principle sort of being, you know, as long as
you're going to patrip and confer blessings, the more the better. Well.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I do think it's worth bringing this out because, as
you say, it is so different from the reports that
you're getting back from people who are attached, fully attached
to the church. They are part of the clergy instead
of merchants. So this is something that is noteworthy in
Marco Pulow's account of his adventures. Let's say, so when
he is describing the places that he comes across. He's
(21:27):
doing this from his standpoint as a merchant, right, so
tell us what he thinks everyone should know about certain cities,
because it's not necessarily what somebody who's sending someone else
on a vacation to those cities needs to know.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Absolutely not. His description of many cities and provinces is
quite formulaic. So he starts out, He'll say, who rules
this place, and most of the places he describes are
under the rule of the Great Khan. What kind of
currency they use payer money in the Mongol Empire, what
their religion is, whether they are Saracens or idolaters or mixed,
(22:03):
et cetera. And especially he's interested in commodities, and these
are both natural commodities, things that are grown there, minerals
that are extracted. How merchants are treated, this is very important,
and what facilities there might be for merchants now in
some of the larger cities of China, Northern China, but
(22:25):
especially southern China, which is conquered by the Mongols after
the Polos reach the east. Marco's very interested in the
amount of tax revenue that flows into the coffers of
the Great Khan. From import and export duties, so he'll
talk about, you know, the great riches and the commodities
(22:48):
that get taxed.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Well, this is making me wonder because Marco's coming on
this as a merchant rooster, Callo's coming at it as
somebody who writes for a living. Do you think that
they are at cross purposes here? Do you think that
Mark Go's like, here's what people really want to know,
and Rustakelo is like, actually, here's what people really want
to know. Do you think that maybe they are trying
to write two different books at the same time.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
That's a good question. I think that there are attached
to various cities, not really in the Mongol Empire, but
sort of around the fringes. Often little stories attached to
local legends, local holy people, saints lives. There are not
a lot of miracles in the course of this book,
but occasionally there's you know, some sort of unusual historical
(23:34):
happenstance attached to a location, a city, a monastery of province.
So those will be inserted, and it's difficult to know
how much you can see Rustikello's hand in some of
those insertions. But on the other hand, although you know
the only way we know of Rustikelo apart from this
book is from this really kind of long and I
(23:57):
always say baggy ar Theory and Romance that he authored.
Chances are he was trained as a notary, so in
that case, you know, he too would have made his
living from recording the kinds of details that Marco was
also interested in.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Right well, I mean this is coming up in my
mind in part because one of the things that you've
sort of set off as its own chapter in your
book is marvels. And so there are things that seem
to be from the real world that you're supposed to
marvel at, and then there are things that are definitely
not from the real world that you're supposed to be
marveling at. So tell us a little bit about the
(24:35):
marvels within this book.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I think one of the most interesting things are versions
of the lives of saints that are recognizable to a
Latin Christian audience, but they're defamiliarized in some strange way.
So we have a version of the Three Magi visiting
the site of the birth of Jesus Christ, but he
(24:59):
tells it the point of view of Persia. So these
really are magi in the Persian sense, and we're told
about the stone that catches fire and the experience from
the point of view of the magi. The other saint
familiar to the West would be Saint Thomas, who famously
was the apostle who, as legends have it, reached India.
(25:22):
So Marco tells about the martyrdom of Saint Thomas and
then the shrine that developed in place. But there Saint
Thomas dies a rather curious death. He's kind of shot
by people who are out hunting peacocks, and he's kind
of a casualty of an arrow gone astray. So we
(25:43):
have the legend of Saint Thomas, and especially about the
miraculous things that happen at the side of his martyrdom.
But on the other hand, the martyrdom itself is kind
of stripped of the kind of Christian significance that you
otherwise would expect to find in a Christian source.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
And one of these ones that might be familiar to
Christians in a different way is the story of the
Buddha as well.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Right, Yeah, the story of the Buddha is very interesting
because versions of the story, like many other medieval legends,
travels actually from the South Asian world, through the Islamic world,
through translated into Persian, Arabic, and then eventually into European languages.
(26:29):
So in the course of the migration of this particular tale,
the story of the Buddha is transformed into the legends
of St. Barlain and Jojosa Fat. So that's a version,
you know, very close to this buddhast story that Marco
tells that would have been familiar, and yet again this
is recoded as the story of the Buddha. In addition,
(26:53):
we're told Marco often links these miracle stories to the
Mongol presence. So we have, for example, the site of
Buddha's footprint on the island of Ceylon, and you have
Kubl Kon taking great interest in the site and hearing
about various relics attached to this place, and really kind
(27:15):
of commanding that relics from this site be brought to him.
So we have holy people from the past, but there
by a kind of centripetal attraction just brought, you know,
magnetically brought into the Mongol sphere of influence.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Well, I love this because it really adds a lot
to a narrative that might otherwise just be list of towns.
Probably has a lot to do with why this book
became popular. And one of the things that you really
have enjoyed from what you've said in the book you
find really charming is that Marco also likes to describe animals.
So can you tell us about some of the animals
(27:55):
that he describes in the book.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
He loves animals. He likes sheep one place where he describes,
you know, these fat tailed sheep that are you know,
the best eating in the world. He loves birds, and
one of the things that distinguishes the way he talks
about fauna in different places is he stresses the difference,
both the difference to be found among, for example, the
(28:19):
birds of a certain place, but also how different they
are from anything that is known back home in Europe.
And they're off the scale, more beautiful, more distinctive, et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, they're delicious, they're cheaper, they're everything you could want
in a bird. One of the descriptions that you have
in your book is of the crocodile as well, And
it took me a minute to figure out what he
was talking about. But when you're trying to describe an
animal that no one back home has ever seen before.
It's a difficult task.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It is. And I should say that Marco and Rusticello,
although we think of them both as Italians, they're writing
in medieval French because that was the language of Italians
who didn't want to write in Latin. So if we
think of what exists in medieval French at this period,
it is stuff like chivalric, romance or epic and so
(29:11):
you can think about the vocabulary associated with those kinds
of stories. So you have a lot of chivalric, feudal,
courtly kinds of vocabulary. Crocodiles don't so much enter into that.
So that you know, there are a lot of phenomena
that Marco and Rusticello are trying to render that simply
are not current in the language that they're using. And
(29:34):
you know, aside from the fact that they are also
non native speakers of Old French. So one of the
things I find charming is the way that Rusticuello uses
quite a simple vocabulary often to describe these things that
no one has ever you know, no one in the
West has ever seen before. So crocodiles don't have claws,
(29:57):
they have nails, you know, there are many occasions of
this sort of simple vocabulary. It's almost like a kindergarten
vocabulary being extended to cover the off the chart experiences
that Marco is relating.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
It would be so difficult to describe any creature that
you hadn't seen every day, at least for me trying
to describe what a crocodile looks like, I probably would
have come up with those words, especially if I was
trying to do it in French, which is not my
first language either. So those are charming moments within the book.
But speaking of French being of contemporary experiences, one of
(30:37):
the things that is different about your book from Marco's
book is you're talking about near the end of your
book other people who are contemporaneous with him, to compare them.
So why was this important to you?
Speaker 2 (30:49):
So my expertise in French is basically twelfth and thirteenth century,
and so here with Marco Polo, I was trying to
extend my family with Marco Polo's world stretching all the
way through Asia, and so it's an enormous amount of
material to deal with, and in doing the research, I
(31:10):
came across people or phenomena I had been familiar with
without necessarily being able to place them in the thirteenth century.
So just one of the ways I like to think
is to you know, use a kind of timeline. And
so I begin the book by saying, well, Jingis Khan
and Saint Francis of ASSIZI die within one year of
(31:33):
each other, and that just gives you some mental anchors
to try to think about them. And when they died,
you know, the Mongols and the Franciscans occupied totally different worlds.
Within a couple decades, Franciscans were traveling to the court
of the Great Khan, and so using dates like this,
(31:53):
just in the process of you know, trying to find
especially literary and cultural as opposed to political figures who
belonged in this late thirteenth century, I was several times
surprised by, oh, look, this person. Not only were they
a contemporary, but they were born and died within a
(32:14):
year or two either way of Marco Polo. So I
just thought it was an interesting way of bringing together
your kind of proverbial dinner party of folks that were
alive at the same time, and just the varied experiences
that they had of this vast duration world would help
to fill in some of the gaps of the century
(32:36):
that often is not well documented in a kind of
world historical sense.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Well, I think that this is so important, and like you,
that's so helpful for me to anchor people within time,
like this person is a contemporary of this person. It
just illuminates things exponentially. So who were the figures that
you decided to play against? Marco Polo? For the people
who haven't yet read the book, the.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Central figure is a Chinese painter named Jia mung Fu.
He is very interesting because he belongs to the imperial
family of the Southern Sung, which is the empire that
Kublai conquered after the Polos had arrived in China. So
you can imagine he, by virtue of being a member
(33:22):
of the imperial family, he would have been expected to
assume a high place in the imperial administration. And now
he's a conquered subject, he's a refugee. So he originally
flees back to his family estates in the country and
devotes himself to a life of the literati, which involves painting, poetry, calligraphy,
(33:44):
fine arts, you know. But eventually he's lured into Mongol service,
and he rises quite high in the administration, both because
he's a kind of a convenient showpiece, but also because
he's quite talented, and so he's an extraordinary figure in
Chinese cultural history. So he's exactly the same age as Marco,
(34:07):
but he arrives at the Court of the Great con
about ten years later because you know, he's been holding back,
and he leaves a remarkable set of paintings, including you know,
works scrolls that are for example, in the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York and in major museums around
the world. His wife is also one of the first
(34:30):
known female painters and poets. So just looking at the
life of Jean mung Fu, his astonishing career, gives us
also a brief glimpse, a little open window onto female experience.
Of the same time, the second person is someone who
Marco Polo would not have encountered at all, because he
(34:52):
was a poet, polymath really in the Delhi Sultanate, which
had recently been established in South Asia. But this is
a guy who composed works mainly in Persian but also
in Hindavi, which is the vernacular language which eventually would
become the source of both Hindi and Urdu. And one
(35:14):
of the things I liked about him is that he
served several sultans of Delhi, but he also wrote a
book just praising India. Now he's praising India under the
rule of Muslims, but he's also praising the accomplishments associated
with non Muslims, with people we would call Hindus. So
(35:36):
again it gives you a sense of the capaciousness of
attitude across religions in this thirteenth century world. The third
person who is hardest to trace in the historical record
is the illegitimate daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, who, as
is the fate of daughters in the Middle Ages, gets
(35:58):
given to litified political alliances. But she's given to the
Ilkhan or the kind of subordinate Khan of Mongol Prussia,
who happens to be a it's either a great nephew
or a great great nephew of Kublai I can never remember.
But she spends a decade or more, as you know,
(36:18):
one of the wives of the Ilkhan of Prussia, and
then after he dies, she returns to Constantinople, where she
founds a monastery, which still is known informally in tourist
guides as Saint Mary of the Mongols. So yeah, again
she's harder to trace. But in the Mongol world, women
(36:38):
traditionally wield much more power than they do in the
Latin Christian world, so she would have been quite a
prominent figure while she was one of the hatuns, one
of the khan's wives in Persia.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yes, it's too bad we don't know more about her,
and I can feel you in the book reaching for
everything we could possibly know about her, But yes, I ain't.
Mary of the Mongols is a very memorable name for
a building. So as we get to the end, what
was the reception of this book at its own moment
(37:11):
in history? And then what was the reception of the
book later? Because a lot of people have heard about
this book now, But as with many things, maybe it
wasn't super popular when it first came out. What's your
impression of its popularity within its own time.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Well, to judge by the number of manuscripts, it was
really a kind of bestseller, not immediately, but going into
the fourteenth century and later. However, it mainly spread in
Latin translation, so not unusually for medieval texts. This text
was copied translated, and no two copies or you know,
(37:49):
virtually no two copies are alike. Because the Latin translation
was done by Dominicans for the use of Dominican Friars
and other Latin Christians. They did not hold back in
making snide comments about religious practices of non Christians, and
of course their interest in what might be said about
(38:10):
places in Central and East Asia was completely different from
the original version of the mercantile kind of sphere. So
a lot of what we know about Marco Polo's travels,
and you can just tell by the name that the
work has been reinterpreted for the modern world comes from both,
(38:32):
you know, versions of the Latin which is then kind
of back translated into a number of vernacular languages, and
also the fact that once we hit the age of Exploration,
you know, the fourteen nineties up through the mid fifteen hundreds,
when Europeans then are venturing out and you know, sailing
east or west to try to find new routes to China,
(38:56):
they're very interested in Marco Polo's books. So famously Columbus
had a copy of I think one of the Latin
versions the Dominican versions that he was taking with him.
So then it becomes a kind of manual or aspirational
guide for those people looking for routes to the Far East,
(39:18):
but for other kinds of purposes, for a kind of
trade that is no longer as cooperative as it had
been in the thirteenth century. And then, you know, in
the modern world, and especially in the last few decades,
with the prominence of let's say, Edward Saied's orientalism and
the rise of colonial and post colonial critique, there's been
(39:42):
a lot of effort to kind of pinpoint Marco Polo
as a point of origin for European Eurocentric views of Asia.
And so part of what I've been trying to do
in returning first of all to the earliest known copy
and then in trying to build out the context on
that copy, is to say that again, as I said,
(40:03):
to see anything from a Eurocentric view in the late
thirteenth century would have been ludicrous, just because you know,
Europe did not occupy the position of military, political, or
economic power on which nineteenth and twentieth century orientalizing views
of Asia rest.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, it's interesting that this kind of became the legacy
of the book in that Marco was deliberately trying to say,
we're not the best, these guys are the best.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Have you seen this?
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Because you will not believe what it's like. And so
it's interesting that in its afterlife it is used as
a way of orientalizing that view of Asia, because this
is not what he set out to do at all.
Have I got that right?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Absolutely? And again I think a lot depends on later translations,
so particularly the clerical translations. And then in the mid
sixties century there was an Italian print translation which contains
material that the printer swears is authentic, but it is
found in no other text, but you know, it suits
(41:12):
the times of the mid sixteenth century, and it's published
in a series with other kinds of exploration narratives, so
the book gets you know, recoded. So there's a lot
of additional material not found in the earliest version that
I've worked on. And then also, you know, modern critics
coming at it from postcolonial or other kinds of views,
(41:34):
or you know, not above cherry picking sometimes those particular
examples that are going to illuminate that particular point of view.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think that who
among us can't be accused of cherry picking at times,
so you could see it happening. Yes, yes, right, So
for people who have never come across Marco Polo's book,
and hopefully they find a good translation that is closed
you when he was actually writing it or dictating it.
(42:05):
What do you think people should look for? Like, what
do you say to people when they're first looking at it?
What is so cool about this book that makes you
want to read it again and again?
Speaker 2 (42:14):
I think for me it's the way that it opens
up this world that is intrinsically fascinating. In twenty sixteen,
I actually published a translation of the earliest known manuscript,
which is in French or Franco Italian, and what was
important to me was to annotate the various places and
(42:37):
phenomena that Marco and Rwstaquillo described to the best of
what I was able to find in secondary scholarship over
a decade ago. Now now the scholarship has been just
galloping apace, and what we can know now about this
world is really quite a bit broader than what I
was able to encode in this twenty sixth translation. But
(43:01):
I would hope that people would be tempted to look
at my translation of Marco Polo's description of the world
for the introduction, where I lay out some of the
reasons why I think the way it's been talked about
is a little bit in misleading, but mostly for the footnotes,
just to discover the wonder of for example, the way
(43:22):
the Great con has when he goes on hunting expeditions.
They're like lost and found officers. So if your falcon
goes astray, you can go to this guy and hope
to recover your falcon or your lost weapons, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Well, I love that. I love all of the cool
little details that you can find in a book such
as this. So I want to thank you so much
for coming on and telling us all about Marco Polo,
because it is a fascinating book and I hope that
more people will read it. So thank you so much
Sharon for coming on and telling us all about it.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Thank you, Danielle.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
To find out more about Sharon's work, you can visit
page on Academia dot edu. Her new book is Marco
Polo and His World. Before we Go, Here's Peter from
Medievalist not to tell us what's on the website, what's
going on?
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Peter.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
Hey, Hey, So since we last talked, there's been a
bloody conflict that erupted between Thailand and Cambodia, and amazingly,
it actually centers on medieval temples sites which date back
to the twelfth and thirteenth century were built by the
Khmer Empire, and both countries have claims to them historical
claims as well as the surrounding land, and for decades
(44:35):
there's been a border dispute and it, unfortunately, it led
to a lot of violence, with at least thirty five
people killed and tens of thousands forced to flee. So
that's my unfortunate news.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yes, well, I mean it just goes to show how
the medieval past is never actually in the past, it's
always part of the present.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
The latest is that has been a ceasefire announced. We
have on the website. He's just kind of talking about
these sites and why they're considered so important to both countries.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Right, So, at the time that we're recording, there's currently
a ceasefire, but if people want some background on what's
going on there, they can go to medievalis dot net.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Right.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Indeed, so we have that, plus we have some much
more fun news which is about two scholars, including one
of your former guests, Seb Falk.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Yes, we love Seb here on the Medieval Podcast.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
Indeed, indeed. And so they've been able to figure out
some information about the long lost story called the Song
of Wade. It's something that was mentioned in Chaucer's works
a couple of times, but we don't have any surviving text.
Event Fortunately, Seb and his colleague we're able to look
back at this medieval sermon which talks about this work
just briefly. But they found out that previous scholars had
(45:49):
mistranslated a key word which we used to be elves,
and now they know it as wolves.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yes, this is the thing about going back to something.
You might find something like a typo or a mistranslation.
And it's very easy to have something like elves and
wolves when we're talking about Middle English, get confused. So
good on Seb and his colleagues for looking this up
and checking for themselves, because this makes a big difference
to the story.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
Yeah, yeah, it's now considered this It must be a
chivalric romance.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Mmmmm.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
And I mean, not only do we love Seb, but
we love cheval romances.
Speaker 3 (46:26):
We do we do, so we have that news plus
a lot more on the website.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Well, thank you Peter for stopping by and telling us
all about it.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Although there is plenty of summer left to enjoy, I
wanted to drop a quick reminder that in September I'll
be teaching my online class Calamity and Change and Introduction
to the fourteenth Century. So if you're interested in learning
with me all about history's best and maybe worst century,
get on Medieval Studies dot thinkivig dot com. I hope
to see you there. In the meantime, my mini series
(46:59):
for Dan Jones is This is History podcast has now
dropped and I hope you've been enjoying it. This is
one of the most tumultuous times in all of French history,
so if you wanted to steal down in a fun
and easy way, I've got you covered. It's called The
Glass King and you can find it on all the
major podcast platforms for everything from Marco Polo to early
(47:22):
Elbowsfollowmidievalist dot Net, on Instagram at medievalist Net or blue
Sky at Medievalists. You can find me Danielle Sabolski across
social media at five min Medievalist or five minute Medievalist,
and you can find my books at all your favorite bookstores.
(47:42):
Our music is by Christian Overton. Thanks for listening, and
have yourself an amazing day.
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