This medal is a part of my French commemorative medals offer
Visit my
page with the offers, please.
You will find many interesting items related to this subject.
If you are
interested in other medals, related to this subject, click here, please;
The medal has been minted in
This medal has been designed by the French medalist Germaine
RESSEGUIER-LAGRIFFOUL Germaine RESSEGUIER-LAGRIFFOUL.
Marco
Polo (
i/ˈmɑrkoʊ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English
- Keyˈpoʊloʊ/; Italian
pronunciation: [ˈmarko
ˈpɔːlo]; September 15, 1254 –
January 8–9, 1324) was an Italian merchant traveller from Venice whose travels are recorded
in Livres
des merveilles du monde, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central
Asia and China. He learned the
mercantile trade from his father and uncle, Niccolò
and Maffeo,
who travelled through Asia, and apparently met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to
Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic
journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at
war with
Genoa; Marco was imprisoned, and
dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married and had three
children. He died in 1324, and was buried in the church of San
Lorenzo.
Marco
Polo was not the first European to reach China
(see Europeans
in Medieval China),
but he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. This book
inspired Christopher
Columbus
and many other travellers. There is a substantial literature based on his
writings. Polo influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of
the Fra Mauro
map.
av. Marco Polo
rv. The
commemorative inscription and the symbolic motive
diameter – 63mm (2½“)
weight – 192.20 gr, (6.78 oz)
metal – bronze, beautiful mint patina
Travels
of Marco Polo
An
authoritative version of Marco Polo's book does not and cannot exist, for the
early manuscripts differ significantly. The published editions of his book
either rely on single manuscripts, blend multiple versions together, or add
notes to clarify, for example in the English translation by Henry Yule. The 1938 English
translation by A.C. Moule and Paul Pelliot is based on a Latin
manuscript found in the library of the Cathedral
of Toledo
in 1932, and is 50% longer than other versions. Approximately 150 manuscript
copies in various languages are known to exist, and before availability of the printing press discrepancies were
inevitably introduced during copying and translation. The popular translation
published by Penguin Books in 1958 by R.E. Latham works several texts together
to make a readable whole.
Polo
related his memoirs orally to Rustichello
da Pisa
while both were prisoners of the Genova Republic. Rustichello wrote The Devisament du Monde in Langues d'Oil, a lingua franca of crusaders and western merchants in the
orient. The idea probably was to create a handbook
for merchants,
essentially a text on weights, measures and distances.
Narrative
The
book opens with a preface describing his father and uncle traveling to Bolghar
where Prince
Berke Khan lived. A year later, they
went to Ukek and continued to Bukhara. There, an envoy from Levant invited them to meet Kublai Khan, who had never met
Europeans. In 1266, they reached the seat of the Kublai Khan at Dadu, present day Beijing, China. Kublai
received the brothers with hospitality and asked them many questions regarding
the European legal and political system. He also inquired about the Pope and
Church in Rome. After the brothers answered the questions he tasked them with
delivering a letter to the Pope, requesting 100 Christians acquainted with the Seven Arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic,
geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy). Kublai Khan requested that an envoy
bring him back oil of the lamp in Jerusalem. The long sede
vacante
between the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268 and the election of
his successor delayed the Polos in fulfilling Kublai's request. They followed
the suggestion of Theobald Visconti, then papal legate for the realm of Egypt, and returned to Venice in 1269 or 1270
to await the nomination of the new Pope, which allowed Marco to see his father
for the first time, at the age of fifteen or sixteen.
In
1271, Niccolò, Maffeo and Marco Polo embarked on their voyage to fulfill
Kublai's request. They sailed to Acre, and then rode on camels to the Persian port of Hormuz. They wanted to sail to
China, but the ships there were not seaworthy, so they continued overland until
reaching Kublai's summer palace in Shangdu, near present-day Zhangjiakou. Three and a half years
after leaving Venice, when Marco was about 21 years old, Kublai welcomed the
Polos into his palace. The exact date of their arrival is unknown, but scholars
estimate it to be between 1271 and 1275. On reaching the Yuan court, the Polos
presented the sacred oil from Jerusalem and the papal letters to their patron.
Marco
knew four languages, and the family had accumulated a great deal of knowledge
and experience that was useful to Kublai. It is possible that he became a
government official; he wrote about many imperial visits to China's southern
and eastern provinces, the far south and Burma.
Kublai
Khan declined the Polos' requests to leave China. They became worried about
returning home safely, believing that if Kublai died, his enemies might turn
against them because of their close involvement with the ruler. In 1292,
Kublai's great-nephew, then ruler of Persia, sent representatives to
China in search of a potential wife, and they asked the Polos to accompany
them, so they were permitted to return to Persia with the wedding party – which
left that same year from Zaitun in southern China on a fleet
of 14 junks. The party sailed to the
port of Singapore, travelled north to Sumatra, sailed west to the [Point
Pedro] port of Jaffna under Savakanmaindan and to Pandyan of Tamilakkam. Eventually Polo crossed the
Arabian Sea to Hormuz. The two-year voyage was a perilous one – of the six
hundred people (not including the crew) in the convoy only eighteen had
survived (including all three Polos). The Polos left the wedding party after
reaching Hormuz and travelled overland to the port of Trebizond on the Black Sea, the present day Trabzon.
Debate
Some
minor sources state that Polo was born in the Venetian island of Curzola (present day Korčula - Croatia). The claim is also
supported by the Croatian
National Tourist Board, which advertises the country as "Croatia,
Homeland of Marco Polo". However there is no proof to this claim,
which "can be approached as pure falsification or even as a theft of
heritage".
Skeptics
have wondered if Marco Polo actually went to China or if he perhaps wrote his
book based on hearsay. While Polo describes paper money and the burning of coal, he
fails to mention the Great Wall of China, Chinese characters, chopsticks, or footbinding. Yet, if the purpose of
Polo's tales was to impress others with tales of his high esteem for an
advanced civilization, then it is possible that Polo shrewdly would omit those
details that would cause his listeners to scoff at the Chinese with a sense of
European superiority. Besides, Marco lived among the Mongol elite. Foot binding
was rare even among Chinese during Polo's time and almost unknown among the
Mongols. The Great Walls were built to keep out northern invaders, whereas the
ruling dynasty during Marco Polo's visit were those very northern invaders.
Researchers note that the Great Wall familiar to us today is a Ming structure built some two
centuries after Marco Polo's travels. The Mongol rulers whom Polo served
controlled territories both north and south of today's wall, and would have no
reasons to maintain any fortifications that may have remained there from the
earlier dynasties. Other Europeans who traveled to Khanbaliq during the Yuan Dynasty,
such as Giovanni
de' Marignolli
and Odoric
of Pordenone,
said nothing about the wall either.
Supporters
of the book's basic accuracy have replied in even greater force. University
of Tübingen
sinologist and historian Hans Ulrich Vogel argued that Polo's description of
paper money and salt production supported his presence in China because he
included details which he could not have gotten otherwise. Economic historian Mark Elvin, in his preface to Vogel's
2013 monograph, concludes that Vogel "demonstrates by specific example
after specific example the ultimately overwhelming probability of the broad
authenticity" of Polo's account. Many problems were caused by the oral
transmission of the original text and the proliferation of significantly
different hand-copied manuscripts. For instance, did Polo exert "political
authority" (seignora) in Yangzhou or merely "sojourn" (sejourna)
there. Elvin concludes that "those who doubted, although mistaken, were
not always being casual or foolish," but "the case as a whole had now
been closed": the book is, "in essence, authentic, and, when used
with care, in broad terms to be trusted as a serious though obviously not
always final, witness."
Legacy
Further
exploration
Other
lesser-known European explorers had already travelled to China, such as Giovanni
da Pian del Carpine,
but Polo's book meant that his journey was the first to be widely known. Christopher
Columbus
was inspired enough by Polo's description of the Far East to want to visit
those lands for himself; a copy of the book was among his belongings, with
handwritten annotations. Bento de Góis, inspired by Polo's writings
of a Christian kingdom in the east, travelled 4,000 miles (6,400 km) in
three years across Central Asia. He never found the kingdom, but ended his
travels at the Great
Wall of China
in 1605, proving that Cathay was what Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) called
"China".
Commemoration
The
Marco
Polo sheep,
a subspecies of Ovis aries, is named after the
explorer, who described it during his crossing of Pamir (ancient Mount Imeon) in 1271. In 1851, a
three-masted Clipper built in Saint John, New
Brunswick also took his name; the Marco Polo was the first ship to sail
around the world in under six months. The airport in Venice is named Venice
Marco Polo Airport,
and the frequent
flyer program
of Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific is known as the "Marco
Polo Club". The travels of Marco Polo are fictionalised in Brian
Oswald Donn-Byrne's
Messer Marco Polo and Gary Jennings' 1984 novel The
Journeyer.
Polo also appears as the pivotal character in Italo Calvino's novel Invisible
Cities.
The 1982 television miniseries, Marco
Polo,
directed by Giuliano Montaldo and depicting Polo's
travels, won two Emmy Awards and was nominated for six
more. He appears as a Great Explorer in the 2008 strategy video game Civilization
Revolution.
Cartography
Marco
Polo's travels may have had some influence on the development of European
cartography, ultimately leading to the European voyages of exploration a century later. The 1453 Fra Mauro
map
was said by Giovanni
Battista Ramusio
(disputed by historian/cartographer Piero Falchetta, in whose work the quote
appears) to have been partially based on the one brought from Cathay by Marco Polo:
That
fine illuminated world map on parchment, which can still be seen in a large
cabinet alongside the choir of their monastery (the Camaldolese monastery of
San Michele di Murano) was by one of the brothers of the monastery, who took
great delight in the study of cosmography, diligently drawn and copied from a
most beautiful and very old nautical map and a world map that had been brought
from Cathay by the most honourable Messer Marco Polo and his father.