the king of that place with his whole army endeavoured to draw it ashore, but ten thousand men were not able to make
it stir. Then St. Thomas the Apostle himself came on the ground, riding on an ass, wearing a shirt, a stole, and a mantle of peacock's feathers, and attended by those two slaves and by two great lions, just as he is painted, and called out `Touch not the log, for it is mine !"How,' quoth the king, `dost thou make it out to be thine ?' So the Apostle loosing the cord wherewith he was girt, ordered his slaves to tie it to the log and draw it ashore. And this being accomplished with the greatest ease, the king was converted, and bestowed upon the saint as much land as he could ride round upon his ass. So during the day-time he used to go on building his churches in the city, but at night he retired to a distance of three Italian miles, where there were numberless peacocks'.... and thus being shot in the side with an arrow such as is called friccia,2 (so that his wound was like that in the side of Christ into which he had thrust his hand), he lay there before his oratory from the hour of corplinés, continuing throughout the night to preach, whilst all his blessed blood was welling from his side ; and in the morning he gave up his soul to God. The priests gathered up the earth with which his blood had mingled, and buried it with him. By means of this I experienced a distinct miracle twice over in my own person, which I shall relate elsewhere.3
Map has it, Mirapor, the place since called San Thomé, near the modern Madras. Mailapûram means or may mean Peacock-Town. A suburb still retains the name Mailapûr. It is near the shore, about three miles and a half south of Fort St. George, at the mouth of the Sydrapetta River.
1 There is an evident hiatus here, though not indicated as such in the copies. Marignolli probably meant to relate, as Polo does (iii, 22), how the saint being engaged in prayer in the middle of the peafowl, a native aiming at one of them shot him.
2 Meinert has here "mit einem Pfeile, indisch Friccia genannt." But it is no Indisch, only the Italian Freccia=Iilêche. I do not know why the word is introduced.
He does not in this work.
IIIFカラー高解像度
