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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
604
I\I A RCO POLO APP. L.
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Dr. Warner writes in the National Biography:
" There is abundant proof that the tomb of the author of the Travels was to be seen in the Church of the Guillemins or Guillelmites at Liége down to the demolition of the building in 1798. The fact of his burial there, with the date of his death, 17th November, 1372, was published by Bale in 1548 (Summariu;n, f. 149 b), and was confirmed independently by Jacob Meyer (Annales rerunz Flandric., 1561, p. 165) and Lud. Guicciardini. (Paesi Bassi, 1567, p. 281.")
In a letter dated from Bodley's Library, 17th March, 1884, to The Academy, 1,11i A.Aril, 1884, No. 623, Mr. Edward B. Nicholson drew attention to the abstract from Jean d'Outremeuse, and carne to the conclusion that the writer of Mandeville's relation was a profound liar, and that he was the Liége Professor of Medicine, John of Burgundy or a la Barbe. Ile adds : " If, in the matter of literary honesty, John a Beard was a bit of a knave, he was very certainly no fool."
On the other hand, M. Léopold Delisle,* has shown that two manuscripts, Nouv. acq. franç. 4515 (Barrois, 24) and Nouv. acq. franç. 4516 (Barrois, 185), were part formerly of one volume copied in 1371 by Raoulet of Orleans and given in the same year to King Charles V. by his physician Gervaise Crestien, viz. one year before the death of the so-called Mandeville ; one of these manuscripts—now separate—contains the Book of Jehan de Mandeville, the other one, a treatise of " la preservacion de epidimie, minucion ou curacion d'icelle faite de maistre Jehan de Bourgoigne, autrement dit â la Barbe, professeur en médicine et cytoien du Liége," in 1365. This bringing together is certainly not fortuitous.
Sir Henry Yule traces thus the sources of the spurious work : " Even in that part of the book which may be admitted with probability to represent some genuine experience, there are distinct traces that another work has been made use of more or less, as an aid in the compilation, we might almost say, as a framework to fill up. This is the itinerary of the German knight William of Boldensele, written in 1336 at the desire of Cardinal Talleyrand de Perigord. A cursory comparison of this with Mandeville leaves no doubt of the fact that the latter has followed its thread, using its suggestions, and on many subjects its expressions, though digressing and expanding o-1 every side, and too often eliminating the singular good sense of the German traveller. After such a comparison we may indicate as examples Boldensele's
it account of Cyprus (Mandeville, Halliwell's ed. 1866, p. 28, and p. io), of Tyre and
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the coast of Palestine (Mandeville, 29, 30, 33, 34), of the journey from Gaza to Egypt
(34), passages about Babylon of Egypt (40), about Mecca (42), the general account
a % • of Egypt (45), the pyramids (52), some of the particular wonders of Cairo, such as the
. ,. slave-market, the chicken-hatching stoves, and the apples of Paradise, i.e. plantains
(49), the Red Sea (57), the convent on Sinai (58, 6o), the account of the Church of
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the Holy Sepulchre (74-76), etc."
He adds : " It is curious that no passage in Mandeville can be plausibly traced to Marco Polo, with one exception. This is (Halliwell's ed., p. 163) where he states that at Ormus the people, during the great heat, lie in water,—a circumstance mentioned by Polo, though not by Odoric. We should suppose it most likely that this fact had been interpolated in the copy of Odoric used by Mandeville ; for, if he had borrowed it direct from Polo, he would have borrowed more." (Encyclopedia Britalznica, P. 474• )
" Leaving this question, there remains the more complex one whetht r the book contains, in any measure, facts and knowledge acquired by actual travels and residence in the East. We believe that it may, but only as a small portion of the whole, and that confined entirely to the section of the work which treats of the Holy Land, and of the different ways of getting thither, as well as of Egypt, and in general of what we understand by the Levant." (Ibid. p. 473.)
Dr. Warner deals the final blow in the National Bio,çraphy : " The alphabets
* T>ibliotheque nationale :—Catalogue des manuscrits des fonds Libri et Barrois. Paris, 1888. 8vo. cf. pp. 251-253.
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