In the first edition of this book I devoted a special note to the exposure
of the worthlessness of the evidence for this story.[23] This note was,
with the present Essay, translated and published at Venice by Comm.
Berchet, but this challenge to the supporters of the patriotic romance, so
far as I have heard, brought none of them into the lists in its defence.
But since Castaldi has got his statue from the printers of Lombardy, would
it not be mere equity that the mariners of Spain should set up a statue at
Huelva to the Pilot Alonzo Sanchez of that port, who, according to Spanish
historians, after discovering the New World, died in the house of Columbus
at Terceira, and left the crafty Genoese to appropriate his journals, and
rob him of his fame?
Seriously; if anybody in Feltre cares for the real reputation of his
native city, let him do his best to have that preposterous and
discreditable fiction removed from the base of the statue. If Castaldi has
deserved a statue on other and truer grounds let him stand; if not, let
him be burnt into honest lime! I imagine that the original story that
attracted Mr. Curzon was more jeu d'esprit than anything else; but that
the author, finding what a stone he had set rolling, did not venture to
retract.
[Sidenote: Frequent opportunities for such introduction in the age
following Polo's.]
88. Mr. Curzon's own observations, which I have italicised about the
resemblance of the two systems are, however, very striking, and seem
clearly to indicate the derivation of the art from China. But I should
suppose that in the tradition, if there ever was any genuine tradition of
the kind at Feltre (a circumstance worthy of all doubt), the name of Marco
Polo was introduced merely because it was so prominent a name in Eastern
Travel. The fact has been generally overlooked and forgotten[24] that, for
many years in the course of the 14th century, not only were missionaries
of the Roman Church and Houses of the Franciscan Order established in the
chief cities of China, but a regular trade was carried on overland between
Italy and China, by way of Tana (or Azov), Astracan, Otrar and Kamul,
insomuch that instructions for the Italian merchant following that route
form the two first chapters in the Mercantile Handbook of Balducci
Pegolotti (circa 1340).[25] Many a traveller besides Marco Polo might
therefore have brought home the block-books. And this is the less to be
ascribed to him because he so curiously omits to speak of the art of
printing, when his subject seems absolutely to challenge its description.
[1] "They draw nowadays the map of the world in a laughable manner, for
they draw the inhabited earth as a circle; but this is impossible,
both from what we see and from reason." (Meteorolog. Lib. II.
cap. 5.) Cf. Herodotus, iv. 36.
[2] In Dante's Cosmography, Jerusalem is the centre of our [Greek:
oikoumenae], whilst the Mount of Purgatory occupies the middle of the
Antipodal hemisphere: -
"Come cio sia, se'l vuoi poter pensare,
Dentro raccolto immagina Sion
Con questo monte in su la terra stare,
Si, ch' ambodue hann' un solo orrizon
E diversi emisperi"....
- Purg. IV. 67.
[3] The belief, with this latter ground of it, is alluded to in curious
verses by Jacopo Alighieri, Dante's son: -
"E molti gran Profeti
Filosofi e Poeti
Fanno il colco dell' Emme
Dov' e Gerusalemme;
Se le loro scritture
Hanno vere figure:
E per la Santa fede
Cristiana ancor si vede
Che' l' suo principio Cristo
Nel suo mezzo conquisto
Per cui prese morte
E vi pose la sorte."
- (Rime Antiche Toscane, III. 9.)
Though the general meaning of the second couplet is obvious, the
expression il colco dell' Emme, "the couch of the M," is puzzling.
The best solution that occurs to me is this: In looking at the world
map of Marino Sanudo, noticed on p. 133, as engraved by Bongars in the
Gesta Dei per Francos, you find geometrical lines laid down,
connecting the N.E., N.W., S.E., and S.W. points, and thus forming a
square inscribed in the circular disk of the Earth, with its diagonals
passing through the Central Zion. The eye easily discerns in these a
great M inscribed in the circle, with its middle angular point at
Jerusalem. Gervasius of Tilbury (with some confusion in his mind
between tropic and equinoxial, like that which Pliny makes in speaking
of the Indian Mons Malleus) says that "some are of opinion that the
Centre is in the place where the Lord spoke to the woman of Samaria at
the well, for there, at the summer solstice, the noonday sun descends
perpendicularly into the water of the well, casting no shadow; a thing
which the philosophers say occurs at Syene"! (Otia Imperialia, by
Liebrecht, p. 1.)
[4] This circumstance does not, however, show in the Vulgate.
[5] "Veggiamo in prima in general la terra
Come risiede e come il mar la serra.
Un T dentro ad un O mostra il disegno
Come in tre parti fu diviso il Mondo,
E la superiore e il maggior regno
Che quasi piglia la meta del tondo.
ASIA chiamata: il gambo ritto e segno
Che parte il terzo nome dal secondo
AFFRICA dico da EUROPA: il mare
Mediterran tra esse in mezzo appare."
- La Sfera, di F. Leonardo di Stagio Dati, Lib. iii. st. 11.
[6] De Civ. Dei, xvi. 17, quoted by Peschel, 92.
[7] Opus Majus, Venice ed. pp. 142, seqq.
[8] Peschel, p. 195. This had escaped me.
[9] By the Rev. W. L. Bevan, M.A., and the Rev.
