IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
| |||||||||
|
| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Citation Information
CONTEMPORARY RECOGNITION 119
Pipino was also the author of a Chronicle, of which a part was
printed by Muratori, and this contains chapters on the Tartar
wars, the destruction of the Old Man of the Mountain, etc.,
derived from Polo. A passage not printed by Muratori has
been extracted by Prof. Bianconi from a MS. of this Chronicle
in the Modena Library, and runs as follows :
" The matters which follow, concerning the magnificence of the Tartar Emperors, whom in their language they call Cham as we have said, are related by Marcus Paulus the Venetian in a certain Book of his which has been translated by me into Latin out of the Lombardic Vernacular. Having gained the notice of the Emperor himself and become attached to his service, he passed nearly 27 years in the Tartar countries."*
Again we have that mention of Marco by Friar Jacopo
d'Acqui, which we have quoted in connection with his capture by
the Genoese, at p. 54.t And the Florentine historian GIOVAN N I
VILI.ANI,+ when alluding to the Tartars, says :
" Let him who would make full acquaintance with their history examine the book of Friar Hayton, Lord of Colcos in Armenia, which he made at the instance of Pope Clement V., and also the Book called Milione which was made by Messer Marco Polo of Venice, who tells much about their power and dominion, having spent a long time among them. And so let us quit the Tartars and return to our subject, the History of Florence."§
77. Lastly, we learn from a curious passage in a medical
work by PIETRO OF ABANO, a celebrated physician and philo
sopher, and a man of Polo's own generation, that he
Further con-
was personally acquainted with the Traveller. In a temporary
discussion on the old notion of the non-habitability of references.
the Equatorial regions, which Pietro controverts, he says :11
* See Muratori, IX. 583, seqq. ; Bianconi, M.em. I. p. 37.
t This Friar makes a strange hotch-potch of what he had read, e.g.: " The Tartars, when they came out of the mountains, made them a king, viz., the son of Prester John, who is thus vulgarly termed Vetulus de la Monlav- is ! " (ilion. Hist. Pair. Script. III. 1557. )
$ G. Villani died in the great plague of 1348. But his book was begun soon after Marco's was written, for he states that it was the sight of the memorials of greatness which he witnessed at Rome, during the Jubilee of 1300, that put it into his head to write the history of the rising glories of Florence, and that he began the work after
his return home. (Bk. VIII. eh. 36.) § Book V. eh. 29.
II Petri Aponensis Medici ac Philosophi Celeberrimi, Conciliator, Venice, 1521, fol. 97. Peter was born in 1250 at Abano, near Padua, and was Professor of Medicine at the University in the latter city. He twice fell into the claws of the Unholy Office, and only escaped them by death in 1316.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 National Institute of Informatics and The Toyo Bunko. All Rights Reserved.