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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
14
MARCO POLO PROL.
Church's heaei en. Finally he charged his Envoys to
bring back to him some Oil of the Lamp which burns on
the Sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem."
Nrn'i r.--;- The appearance of the Great Kaan's letter may be illustrated by two letters on so-called Corean paper preserved in the French archives ; one from Arghún Khan of Persia (1289), brought by Buscarel, and the other from his son Oljaitu (May, 1305), to Philip the Fair. These are both in the Mongol language, and according to Abel Rémusat and other authorities, in the Uighúr character, the parent of the present Mongol writing. Facsimiles of the letters are given in Rémusat's paper on intercourse with Mongol Princes, in MJ,n. de l'Acad. des Inscript. vols. vii. and viii., reproductions in J. B Chabot's Hist. de 11Iar jabalaha III., Paris, 1895, and preferably in Prince Roland Bonaparte's beautiful Documents Mongols, Pl. XIV., and we give samples of the two in vol. ii.::
'4
NOTE 2.--" The Seven Arts," from a date reaching back nearly to classical times, and down through the Middle Ages, expressed the whole circle of a liberal education, and it is to these Seven Arts that the degrees in arts were understood to apply. They were divided into the Trivium of Rhetoric, Logic; and Grammar, and the Quadríviunz of Arithmetic, .Astronomy, Music, and Geometry. The 38th epistle of Seneca was in many MSS. (according to Lipsius) entitled "L. Annaei Senecae Liber de Septein . l rtibus liberalibus." I do not find, however, that Seneca there mentions categorically more than five, viz., Grammar, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, and Arithmetic. In the 5th century we find the Seven Arts to form the successive subjects of the last seven books of the work of Martianus Capella, much used in the schools during the early Middle Ages. The Seven Arts will be found enumerated in the verses of Tzetzes (Chi/. XI. 525), and allusions to them in the medieval romances are endless. Thus, in one of the " Gestes d'Alexandre," a chapter is headed " Comment Aristotle api-ent à Alixandre les Sept Arts." In the tale of the Seven Wise Masters, Diocletian selects that number of tutors for his son, each to instruct him in one of the Seven Arts. In the romance of Erec and Eneide we have a dress on which the fairies had portrayed the Seven Arts (Franc. Michel, Recherches, etc. II. 82) ; in the Roman de llfaho;nmet the young impostor is master of all the seven. There is one medieval poem called the Marriage of the Seven Arts, and another called the Battle of the Seven Arts. (See also Dante, Convito, Trat. II. c.
.I ; Not. et Ex. V., 491 segq. )
NOTE 3. —The Chinghizide Princes were eminently liberal—or indifferent—in religion ; and even after they became Mahomedan, which, however, the Eastern branch never did, they were rarely and only by brief fits persecutors. Hence there was scarcely one of the non-Mahomedan Khans of whose conversion to Christianity there were not stories spread. The first rumours of Chinghiz in the West were as of a Christian conqueror ; tales may be found of the Christianity of Chagatai, Hulaku, Abaka, Arghun, Baidu, Ghazan, Sartak, Kuyuk, Mangu, Kublai, and one or two of the latter's successors in China, all probably false, with one or two doubtful exceptions.
* See plates with eh. xvii. of Bk. IV. See also the Uightír character in the second Païza, lI, eh. vii.
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