The Travels of Marco Polo Volume I Part 42

Respecting the mariner's compa.s.s and gunpowder I shall say nothing, as no one now, I believe, imagines Marco to have had anything to do with their introduction. But from a highly respectable source in recent years we have seen the introduction of Block-printing into Europe connected with the name of our Traveller. The circ.u.mstances are stated as follows:[20]

"In the beginning of the 15th century a man named Pamphilo Castaldi, of Feltre ... was employed by the Seignory or Government of the Republic, to engross deeds and public edicts of various kinds ... the initial letters at the commencement of the writing being usually ornamented with red ink, or illuminated in gold and colours

"According to Sansovino, certain stamps or types had been invented some time previously by Pietro di Natali, Bishop of Aquiloea.[21] These were made at Murano of gla.s.s, and were used to stamp or print the outline of the large initial letters of public doc.u.ments, which were afterwards filled up by hand.... Pamphilo Castaldi improved on these gla.s.s types, by having others made of wood or metal, and having seen several Chinese books which the famous traveller Marco Polo had brought from China, and of which the entire text was printed with wooden blocks, he caused moveable wooden types to be made, each type containing a single letter; and with these he printed several broadsides and single leaves, at Venice, in the year 1426. Some of these single sheets are said to be preserved among the archives at Feltre....

"The tradition continues that John Faust, of Mayence ... became acquainted with Castaldi, and pa.s.sed some time with him, at his _Scriptorium_,... at Feltre;"

and in short developed from the knowledge so acquired the great invention of printing. Mr. Curzon goes on to say that Panfilo Castaldi was born in 1398, and died in 1490, and that he gives the story as he found it in an article written by Dr. Jacopo Facen, of Feltre, in a (Venetian?) newspaper called _Il Gondoliere_, No. 103, of 27th December, 1843.

In a later paper Mr. Curzon thus recurs to the subject:[22]

"Though none of the early block-books have dates affixed to them, many of them are with reason supposed to be more ancient than any books printed with moveable types. Their resemblance to Chinese block-books is so exact, that they would almost seem to be copied from the books commonly used in China. _The impressions are taken off on one side of the paper only, and in binding, both the Chinese, and ancient German, or Dutch block-books, the blank sides of the pages are placed opposite each other_, and sometimes pasted together.... The impressions are not taken off with printer's ink, but _with a brown paint or colour, of a much thinner description, more in the nature of Indian ink, as we call it, which is used in printing Chinese books_. Altogether the German and Oriental block-books are so precisely alike, in almost every respect, that ... we must suppose that the process of printing then must have been copied from ancient Chinese specimens, brought from that country by some early travellers, whose names have not been handed down to our times."

The writer then refers to the tradition about _Guttemberg_ (so it is stated on this occasion, not Faust) having learned Castaldi's art, etc., mentioning a circ.u.mstance which he supposes to indicate that Guttemberg had relations with Venice; and appears to a.s.sent to the probability of the story of the art having been founded on specimens brought home by Marco Polo.

This story was in recent years diligently propagated in Northern Italy, and resulted in the erection at Feltre of a public statue of Panfilo Castaldi, bearing this inscription (besides others of like tenor):--

"_To Panfilo Castaldi the ill.u.s.trious Inventor of Movable Printing Types, Italy renders this Tribute of Honour, too long deferred._"

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 circ.u.mstance 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 ci sia, se'l vuoi poter pensare, Dentro raccolto immagina Sion Con questo monte in su la terra stare, S, 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 pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstance 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. H. W. Phillott, M.A. In Asia, they point out, the only name showing any recognition of modern knowledge is Samarcand.

[10] His work, _Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis_, intended to stimulate a new Crusade, has three capital maps, besides that of the World, one of which, translated, but otherwise in facsimile, is given at p. 18 of this volume. But besides these maps, he gives, in a tabular form of parallel columns, the reigning sovereigns in Europe and Asia connected with his historical retrospect, just on the plan presented in Sir Harris Nicolas's Chronology of History.

[11] I do not see that al-Biruni deserves the credit in this respect a.s.signed to him by Professor Peschel, so far as one can judge from the data given by Sprenger (_Peschel_, p. 128; _Post und Reise-Routen_, 81-82.)

[12] For example, _Delli_, which Polo does not name; _Diogil_ (Deogir); on the Coromandel coast _Setemelti_, which I take to be a clerical error for _Sette-Templi_, the Seven PaG.o.das; round the Gulf of Cambay we have _Cambetum_ (Kambayat), _Cocintaya_ (Kokan-Tana, see vol. ii. p.

396), _Goga, Baroche, Neruala_ (Anharwala), and to the north _Moltan_.

Below Multan are _Hocibelch_ and _Bargelidoa_, two puzzles. The former is, I think, _Uch-baligh_, showing that part of the information was from Perso-Mongol sources.

[13] I see it stated by competent authority that _Romman_ is often applied to any prose composition in a Romance language.

In or about 1426, Prince Pedro of Portugal, the elder brother of the ill.u.s.trious Prince Henry, being on a visit to Venice, was presented by the Signory with a copy of Marco Polo's book, together with a map already alluded to. (_Major's P. Henry_, pp. 61, 62.)

[14] This is partly due also to Fra Mauro's reversion to the fancy of the circular disk limiting the inhabited portion of the earth.

[15] An early graphic instance of this is Ruysch's famous map (1508). The following extract of a work printed as late as 1533 is an example of the like confusion in verbal description: "The Territories which are beyond the limits of Ptolemy's Tables have not yet been described on certain authority. Behind the Sinae and the Seres, and beyond 180 of East Longitude, many countries were discovered by one [_quendam_]

Marco Polo a Venetian and others, and the sea-coasts of those countries have now recently again been explored by Columbus the Genoese and Amerigo Vespucci in navigating the Western Ocean.... To this part (of Asia) belong the territory called that of the _Bachalaos_ [or Codfish, Newfoundland], _Florida_, _the Desert of Lop_, _Tangut_, _Cathay_, the realm of _Mexico_ (wherein is the vast city of _Temist.i.tan_, built in the middle of a great lake, but which the older travellers styled QUINSAY), besides _Paria_, _Uraba_, and the countries of the _Canibals_." (_Joannis Schoneri Carolostadtii Opusculum Geogr._, quoted by Humboldt, _Examen_, V. 171, 172.)

[16] In Robert Parke's Dedication of his Translation of Mendoza's, London, 1st of January, 1589, he identifies China and j.a.pan with the regions of which _Paulus Venetus_ and _Sir John Mandeuill_ "wrote long agoe."

--_MS. Note by Yule_.

[17] "_Totius Europae et Asiae Tabula Geographica, Auctore Thoma D.

Aucupario. Edita Argentorati_, MDXXII." Copied in Witsen.

[18] This strange a.s.sociation of _Balor_ (i.e., Bolor, that name of so many odd vicissitudes, see pp. 178-179 infra) with the shut-up Israelites must be traced to a pa.s.sage which Athanasius Kircher quotes from _R. Abraham Pizol_ (qu. Peritsol?): "_Regnum_, inquit, Belor _magnum et excelsum nimis, juxta omnes illos qui scripserunt Historicos_. Sunt in eo Judaei _plurimi inclusi, et illud in latere Orientali et Boreali_," etc. (_China Ill.u.s.trata_, p. 49.)

[19] Vol. ii. p. 1.

[20] _A short Account of Libraries of Italy_, by the Hon. R. Curzon (the late Lord de la Zouche); in _Bibliog. and Hist. Miscellanies; Philobiblon Society_, vol. i, 1854, pp. 6. seqq.

[21] P. del Natali was Bishop of Equilio, a city of the Venetian Lagoons, in the latter part of the 14th century. (See _Ugh.e.l.li, Italia Sacra_, X. 87.) There is no ground whatever for connecting him with these inventions. The story of the gla.s.s types appears to rest entirely and solely on one obscure pa.s.sage of Sansovino, who says that under the Doge Marco Corner (1365-1367): "_certe Natale Veneto lasci un libro della materie delle forme da giustar intorno alle lettere, ed il modo di formarle di vetro_." There is absolutely nothing more. Some kind of stencilling seems indicated.