Marco Polo: biography of this traveler of the Middle Ages

He was not the only medieval traveler to leave written testimony of his travels. It had already been done by the Chinese Confucian monk Xuanzang in the 7th century, and also later by the Muslim traveler Ibn Battuta in the 14th century. The first traveled from China to Central Asia, and Battuta traveled the coasts of the Indian Ocean, the Peninsula Arabian and part of Africa in a series of spectacular trips that had great repercussions in the world Muslim.

In Christian Europe we must not forget either Rubruquis, the Latinized name of the Flemish Willem van Ruysbroeck who, more or less at the same time as Marco Polo, was sent by the King Louis IX of France to the Mughal court as ambassador, and who also recorded his journey through Tartary, as the steppe that stretched beyond the Crimea.

Why, then, did Marco Polo's travels have such an impact? what does The book of wonders, the well-known and extensive story where the Venetian collects his adventures, a key book in medieval travel literature?

In this biography of Marco Polo we will delve into the life of this curious and often enigmatic character., and we will try to answer all these questions.

Brief biography of Marco Polo

As happens with so many historical figures, in the life of Marco Polo reality and legend are confused. And it is that he himself did a lot to make it so: his wonder book it is full of real references, but also many inventions. Some scholars doubt that Polo even reached China. Let's dig a little into his biography.

Venice, the Crusades and the Orient

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Venice was just a village built on unstable marshes.. The geographical situation of the city was eminently strategic: the inhabitants of Veneto who fled from the barbarian invasions took refuge there. The complicated Venetian orography, dotted with lagoons and mud flats, facilitated its isolation and protected it from the continuous attacks of its enemies.

But in the 13th century, the landscape in the city of canals had changed. Venice was no longer that village built on mud and troubled waters, but had become a true commercial power. The city constituted the border between Christian Europe and the unknown East, and Venetian merchants always placed their aspirations towards the east. In fact, the so-called Silk Road (a name, by the way, applied in the 19th century) had been running for many centuries, which commercially connected distant China with Europe, passing through the heart of Asia.

The Fourth Crusade had meant the absolute consolidation of Venetian trade in eastern Europe. It all started when the crusaders asked rich Venetian merchants for financing in exchange for part of the war profits. In 1204, the Crusaders sacked the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, and the Venetians managed to seize a large booty. Among the goods that arrive at the city of the canals are the majestic horses of bronze from the Byzantium hippodrome, which were arranged on the façade of the very Basilica of San Frames.

The terrible sack of Constantinople and the enormous profits derived from it by the Venetians made it easy for the merchants of Venice to open a series of branches in Constantinople. The Polo family will not be less; After living for a few years in the Byzantine capital, they moved to the port of Soldaia, in Crimea, a very important point for trade with Asia. From there, the Polo brothers (Marco the Elder, Niccolò and Matteo) begin an impressive journey of more than fifteen years, which leads them to follow the caravan route that goes into the mysterious and fascinating Orient. It is the 60s of the 13th century.

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the young mark

When Niccolò and his brothers return to Venice, the former finds that his wife has died and that his son (whom he does not know), Marco, is already fifteen years old. Niccolò, very pleased with that intelligent and alert boy, takes him with him on his second trip, but not before remarrying another woman with whom he will not share an existence either. It is the year 1269. Marco Polo will not return to Venice until twenty-three years later.

The first four years of this great journey are spent by the Polo family, now with the youngest in tow, touring the Middle East and Central Asia. In 1275, that is to say, six years after his departure, they arrive before Kublai Khan himself, Emperor of the Mughals, who takes a special affection for this young Venetian in his early twenties. According to Marco Polo in his wonder book, the Khan trusts him to the point of sending him to the newly annexed southern lands of Burma as ambassador.

If we are to believe the version that the author wields in his work, the Khan required his services for more than two decades. In reality, the Mughals were perfectly used to finding European travelers in their lands: the Silk Road was teeming with Russians, Germans, Franks, and Arabs, among many others.

Central Asia was a bridge through which the East and the West were connected since time immemorial, by what the western man was not at all unknown to the inhabitants of the steppe and the distant China. Not even the Christian religion was; For centuries, Nestorian monks had traveled throughout Asia founding monasteries, which, incidentally, gave origin to the medieval legend of Prester John, an enigmatic Christian king who lived in the confines of Asia.

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Return to Venice and imprisonment

Marco Polo spends all his youth in Asian lands; It is not until the year 1295, when he is over forty years old, that he returns to Venice. After so many years of adventures and adventures, it seems that Marco wants to rest. So he settles permanently in the city of canals, where he gets married and takes over the family business of the Polos.

The resplendent Republic of Venice had, of course, many enemies. Among them was the city of Genoa, its main commercial competitor in the eastern Mediterranean. Without knowing exactly why, Marco Polo fell into the hands of the Genoese and was imprisoned.. The year is 1298; the traveler who has traveled so many lands will be forced to remain confined for a year in a cell.

The prison term turns out to be extremely fruitful for Marco, since it is during these years in prison in Genoa that he writes (or rather dictates) his wonder book. In his seclusion he meets Rustichello of Pisa, a rather learned writer who was the author of several romances of chivalry and who had served in the Crusades. Marco Polo unites his experiences in Asia with Rustichello's literary talent, and both make up what would be the masterpiece of medieval travel books.

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Il Milione, The book of wonders either Marco Polo's travels

This masterpiece of the so-called literature of wonders or mirabilia is known in these three ways, a medieval genre that compiled trips through exotic and distant lands, not always with a will realistic. He wonder book Marco Polo is certainly no exception. In it, the traveler combines the memories of the trips made with his father and his uncles with elements drawn from an exalted imagination, which many authors have related to the fertile pen of Rustichello, more accustomed than Marco to dealing with literary themes.

How could it be otherwise, the book is a real success. In Italy he became known as Il Milione, alluding to the number of fantastic and fast-paced stories that he narrates. Some authors maintain that the name may be an insinuation to the hoaxes that Marco tells and that his contemporaries never fully believed; hence the allusion to the "million" fantasies of the story.

Yes, perhaps the Europeans of the time never came to believe all the wonders of the text (after all, the veracity of some of its parts is still in doubt today), but that was not an impediment for the work to be a true best-seller. We do not have the original, probably written in Franco-Italian, but we do have more than a hundred of the copies that were made after the fact to satisfy public demand. Unfortunately, all these copies differ significantly in some respects, so it is impossible to establish what the original account was like.

Travel or wonder stories made it easy for readers to escape from their own world. The medieval mentality, moreover, was very fond of the strange, unusual or exoticTherefore, the authors often seasoned his writings with the most bizarre episodes and with fanciful beings who, far from making the audience frown, further fueled his passion. Thus, Polo introduces into his story the famous cynocephalians, dog-headed men that he had supposedly found in Asian lands.

Medieval geography established monsters (a name that refers to something unusual, not always horrible), in the unknown confines of the world; multitude of maps of the time show strange characters on the borders. Those lands were the perfect setting to situate fascinating stories, often dotted with curious beings.

traveler's death

Marco Polo was released and returned to his hometown in 1299, under the peace treaty between Genoa and Venice. The last years of his life we ​​find him living peacefully and quietly with his family and attending to his business. The famous traveler died at sunset on January 8, 1324. According to tradition, before he died he said that what he had written in his book was not even half of what he had seen in Asia.

Did Marco Polo tell the truth? Leaving aside the wonders that are obviously the fruit of the imagination, it is clear that his Asian journey is real. However, many historians doubt that he would have reached China, even that he would have worked for Kublai Khan, the Mughal emperor. Those who claim this are based on a series of errors and contradictions that can be traced in their wonder book, such as that the author never mentions the Great Wall or the tea ceremony during his stay in China.

Whether or not everything the traveler tells is true, what is certain is that Marco Polo's travel book influenced a whole generation of Europeans and spurred their thirst to explore the world. It is no exaggeration to consider works like Il Milione the precursors of the great age of discovery, which occurred just over a century later.