Archpriest Leo, who
had gone as Envoy to the Eastern Capital from John Duke of Campania.[17]
Romantic histories on this foundation, in verse and prose, became diffused
in all the languages of Western Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia,
rivalling in popularity the romantic cycles of the Round Table or of
Charlemagne. Nor did this popularity cease till the 16th century was well
advanced.
The heads of most of the Mediaeval Travellers were crammed with these
fables as genuine history.[18] And by the help of that community of legend
on this subject which they found wherever Mahomedan literature had spread,
Alexander Magnus was to be traced everywhere in Asia. Friar Odoric found
Tana, near Bombay, to be the veritable City of King Porus; John
Marignolli's vainglory led him to imitate King Alexander in setting up a
marble column "in the corner of the world over against Paradise," i.e.
somewhere on the coast of Travancore; whilst Sir John Maundevile, with a
cheaper ambition, borrowed wonders from the Travels of Alexander to adorn
his own. Nay, even in after days, when the Portuguese stumbled with
amazement on those vast ruins in Camboja, which have so lately become
familiar to us through the works of Mouhot, Thomson, and Garnier, they
ascribed them to Alexander.[19]
Prominent in all these stories is the tale of Alexander's shutting up a
score of impure nations, at the head of which were Gog and Magog, within a
barrier of impassable mountains, there to await the latter days; a legend
with which the disturbed mind of Europe not unnaturally connected that
cataclysm of unheard-of Pagans that seemed about to deluge Christendom in
the first half of the 13th century. In these stories also the beautiful
Roxana, who becomes the bride of Alexander, is Darius's daughter,
bequeathed to his arms by the dying monarch. Conspicuous among them again
is the Legend of the Oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, which with
audible voice foretell the place and manner of Alexander's death. With
this Alexandrian legend some of the later forms of the story had mixed up
one of Christian origin about the Dry Tree, L'Arbre Sec. And they had
also adopted the Oriental story of the Land of Darkness and the mode of
escape from it, which Polo relates at p. 484 of vol. ii.
[Sidenote: Injustice long done to Polo. Singular modern instance.]
74. We have seen in the most probable interpretation of the nickname
Milioni that Polo's popular reputation in his lifetime was of a
questionable kind; and a contemporary chronicler, already quoted, has told
us how on his death-bed the Traveller was begged by anxious friends to
retract his extraordinary stories.[20] A little later one who copied the
Book "per passare tempo e malinconia" says frankly that he puts no faith
in it.[21] Sir Thomas Brown is content "to carry a wary eye" in reading
"Paulus Venetus"; but others of our countrymen in the last century express
strong doubts whether he ever was in Tartary or China.[22] Marden's
edition might well have extinguished the last sparks of scepticism.[23]
Hammer meant praise in calling Polo "der Vater orientalischer
Hodogetik," in spite of the uncouthness of the eulogy. But another grave
German writer, ten years after Marsden's publication, put forth in a
serious book that the whole story was a clumsy imposture![24]
[1] M. d'Avezac has refuted the common supposition that this admirable
traveller was a native of Brabant.
The form Rubruquis of the name of the traveller William de Rubruk
has been habitually used in this book, perhaps without sufficient
consideration, but it is the most familiar in England, from its use by
Hakluyt and Purchas. The former, who first published the narrative,
professedly printed from an imperfect MS. belonging to the Lord
Lumley, which does not seem to be now known. But all the MSS. collated
by Messrs. Francisque-Michel and Wright, in preparing their edition of
the Traveller, call him simply Willelmus de Rubruc or Rubruk.
Some old authors, apparently without the slightest ground, having
called him Risbroucke and the like, it came to be assumed that he
was a native of Ruysbroeck, a place in South Brabant.
But there is a place still called Rubrouck in French Flanders. This
is a commune containing about 1500 inhabitants, belonging to the
Canton of Cassel and arrondissement of Hazebrouck, in the Department
du Nord. And we may take for granted, till facts are alleged against
it, that this was the place from which the envoy of St. Lewis drew
his origin. Many documents of the Middle Ages, referring expressly to
this place Rubrouck, exist in the Library of St. Omer, and a detailed
notice of them has been published by M. Edm. Coussemaker, of Lille.
Several of these documents refer to persons bearing the same name as
the Traveller, e.g., in 1190, Thierry de Rubrouc; in 1202 and 1221,
Gauthier du Rubrouc; in 1250, Jean du Rubrouc; and in 1258, Woutermann
de Rubrouc. It is reasonable to suppose that Friar William was of the
same stock. See Bulletin de la Soc. de Geographie, 2nd vol. for
1868, pp. 569-570, in which there are some remarks on the subject by
M. d'Avezac; and I am indebted to the kind courtesy of that eminent
geographer himself for the indication of this reference and the main
facts, as I had lost a note of my own on the subject.
It seems a somewhat complex question whether a native even of French
Flanders at that time should be necessarily claimable as a
Frenchman;[A] but no doubt on this point is alluded to by M. d'Avezac,
so he probably had good ground for that assumption. [See also Yule's
article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Rockhill's Rubruck,
Int., p. xxxv.
