Peter CostelloHis encounters with Christianity is one of the mysteries of Marco Polo
When Marco Polo set off with his father and his uncle in 1271 on their celebrated journey across Asia which is recorded in his famous book A Description of the World, they were actually on a mission for the Pope to awaken China to Christianity.
The account of the Asian nations was written, not by Polo, but by his one-time fellow prisoner-of-war and professional writer of romances, Rustichello da Pisa. It has been one of the most import medieval texts since it was first circulated in manuscript and early printed form from the end of the 13th Century.
The Smithsonian Magazine recently carried an article heralding the publication later this year of a new book on Marco Polo, the result of some 13 years of research by an American academic, allegedly the product of Polo’s three daughters, which seem to suggest that Polo “discovered America” long before Columbus (though after the Irish and the Vikings, of course). This is based less on the tale of “people clothed in skins living underground” like the Inuit, than on the map which it is said show Kamchatka and Alaska.
The source of these papers was an Italian emigrant to the US, the author of a science fiction romance. It would be easy to dismiss this as another romance, inspired perhaps by the notorious Vinland Map, which many regard as a fake. I would be very dubious about the whole thing, but look forward to reading the book when the University of Chicago press publishes it.
Mysteries
Yet there are undoubtedly mysteries in Marco Polo. One of these relates to Christianity. Polo is very accepting of the various traditions of Christianity he encountered, whether Orthodox, Nestorian, Jacobite or Coptic.
When he reached Peking, Polo did indeed encounter Christians there. These were not Catholics, of course, but the Nestorians who were long established in the Far East, and who first proclaimed the name of Jesus to the Chinese people.
However, there is another passage in The Description of the World which is of interest and remains mysterious. He mentions that when the Polos visited Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, “a certain learned Saracen” told them about a strange local cult.
Together with the Saracen, they set off to investigate the matter. They were received by the people with suspicion, but they warmed to them after a while. The Polos found in their places of worship books which they identified as copies of the Psalter. These, they were told, came down from “three apostles of the 70 who went through the world preaching”.
Faith
Some 700,000 people held to this ancient faith. The Polos advised them to appeal to the Great Khan for recognition as Christians. This they did, and their status was certified in due course by the Khan himself.
It has been suggested that these people were, in fact Manicheans, followers of the Iranian prophet Mani, who died in 274AD. But Polo refers particularly to their use of the Psalter which would be unlikely for followers of Mani. One wonders if they were not some sect of early Christians, akin to the Thomas Christians of Malabar.
Polo was familiar with Nestorian Christians, but these people were clearly different. Currently research is being conducted by an Australian team into the Manichean and Nestorian remains in the medieval port of Quanzhou, to the south of Fuzhou.
It ought to be said that the passages about these Christians in Fuzhou appeared first in a Toledo manuscript of The Description of the World which dates from the 15th Century, over a century after Polo’s death. This was made use of by Giovanni Ramusio in his printed edition of 1559 and it was this version that promoted the popular images of Marco Polo, drawn from local legends in Venice.
The manuscripts and early printed versions of Marco Polo’s book remain riddled with problems, which have not all been finally resolved. However, they present real mysteries pertaining to Marco Polo, and not a mere fabrication of one, as the new claims about his having knowledge of Alaska seem to be.