Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [177]
Although Ramusio’s tale concluded happily, it stands as a sardonic commentary on the superficiality and materialism of Venetians. They were unwilling—indeed, unable—to recognize Marco, Maffeo, and Niccolò until the three staged a theatrical display of their wealth.
The startling dinner marked the beginning of the rehabilitation of the newly returned Polos. Thereafter, the three received the respect they felt they deserved from their fellow citizens, with Marco singled out for special attention. “All the young men went every day continuously to visit and converse with Messer Marco,” Ramusio claimed, “who was most charming and gracious, and to ask of him matters concerning Cathay and the Great Khan, and he responded with so much kindness that all felt themselves to be in a certain manner indebted to him.”
IT IS EASY to understand why Marco attracted notice. The significance of the inventions that he brought back from China, or which he later described in his Travels, cannot be overstated. At first, Europeans regarded these technological marvels with disbelief, but eventually they adopted them.
Paper money, virtually unknown in the West until Marco’s return, revolutionized finance and commerce throughout the West.
Coal, another item that had caught Marco’s attention in China, provided a new and relatively efficient source of heat to an energy-starved Europe.
Eyeglasses (in the form of ground lenses), which some accounts say he brought back with him, became accepted as a remedy for failing eyesight. In addition, lenses gave rise to the telescope—which in turn revolutionized naval battles, since it allowed combatants to view ships at a great distance—and the microscope. Two hundred years later, Galileo used the telescope—based on the same technology—to revolutionize science and cosmology by supporting and disseminating the Copernican theory that Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun.
Gunpowder, which the Chinese had employed for at least three centuries, revolutionized European warfare as armies exchanged their lances, swords, and crossbows for cannon, portable harquebuses, and pistols.
Marco brought back gifts of a more personal nature as well. The golden paiza, or passport, given to him by Kublai Khan had seen him through years of travel, war, and hardship. Marco kept it still, and would to the end of his days. He also brought back a Mongol servant, whom he named Peter, a living reminder of the status he had once enjoyed in a far-off land.
In all, it is difficult to imagine the Renaissance—or, for that matter, the modern world—without the benefit of Marco Polo’s example of cultural transmission between East and West.
BENEATH ITS PLACID SURFACE, the Republic of Venice was ailing at the time of Marco’s return. The reign of Lorenzo Tiepolo, the doge when the Polo company departed, had been marked by one setback after another—first famine, then unnecessary squabbles with neighbors whom Venice alienated by imposing tariffs on foreign shipping, a gesture that served only to lessen trade. At about this time, the Republic embarked on three years of military skirmishes with Bologna. Not surprisingly, relations with northern Italy deteriorated badly.
Matters worsened when Venice refused to aid the Church in the War of the Sicilian Vespers, a protracted conflict (1282–1302) pitting King Peter III of Aragon against Pope Martin IV. In retaliation, the Church put an ironclad ban in place, beginning in 1284. Mass could not be said in San Marco; the bells high in the campanile remained eerily silent. The religious pageantry that marked Venetian life—weddings, funerals, even baptisms—was strictly forbidden. The ban extended to the last rites; those denied them might suffer