Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [184]
Marco’s place in Venetian society was secure, his fortune intact. And once again his elders raised the question of an advantageous marriage—not to the exotic Indian or Mongol princess of his daydreams, but to a woman of a Venetian family equivalent to the Polos in status. After all the mating customs and behaviors he had witnessed in Asia, the thought of marital monogamy may not have been entirely welcome. Nevertheless, a match was arranged in 1300.
MARCO’S PROSPECTIVE BRIDE was named Donata, the daughter of a merchant named Vitale Badoèr. Venetian weddings were elaborate affairs, notable for feasting and business arrangements between the two parties. Representatives of the bride and groom formally contracted on the dies desponsationis. On this occasion, the groom made a formal visit to the bride, and, reenacting a ritual handed down from their Roman ancestors, anointed her head. The wedding ceremony itself occurred on the dies nuptiarum, and it was marked by additional rites. In the transductio ad domum, the groom escorted the bride to his home for the first time, to the accompaniment of celebrating relatives. Afterward, the couple performed the visitatio to the church where the service would occur, highlighted by the benedictio, devoted to the presentation and blessing of the wedding ring. Immediately afterward, the bride produced her repromissa, or dowry, in this case coffers filled with jewelry, linens, damasks, silk, and jewels. Donata’s dowry also included a considerable amount of property, including real estate. (According to a legal document dated March 17, 1312, Donata’s uncle liquidated her dowry for her husband’s benefit.)
Venetian wedding tradition prescribed that eight days after the ceremony the bride pay a visit to her father’s house; known as the reverentalia, the visit was marked by another feast, and presents were distributed to the guests. With this observance, Marco and Donata’s formal wedding rites concluded.
AFTER MARRYING so late in life, Marco Polo behaved in accordance with traditional Venetian life. In rapid succession, he and his wife welcomed three daughters into the world: Fantina, Bellela, and Moreta (the names, common in Venice, frequently appeared in legal documents with variant spellings). His father had died at some point before 1300, when a record referred to him as “the late” Niccolò Polo, but the precise date of death is unknown. Although Marco alone is remembered for his travels, the elder Polo’s career in exploration was perhaps even more extraordinary than his son’s, for Niccolò completed not just one but two round-trip expeditions to the court of Kublai Khan.
Although Marco gave his father and his equally adventurous uncle Maffeo scant attention in the Travels, and often seemed eager to take all the credit for their joint endeavors, he did pay respect to his father in Venice. “His father being dead,” according to Ramusio, “he, as befits a good and pious son, caused to be made for him a tomb that was very much honored for the conditions of those times, which was a sarcophagus of living stone that may be seen to this day”—Ramusio was writing 250 years later—“placed under the portico that is before the Church of San Lorenzo of this city, on the right-hand side as one enters, with such inscription as indicates that it is the tomb of Messer Niccolò Polo.”
AFTER NICCOLÒ’S DEATH, Marco and his uncle Maffeo continued to trade profitably, but their travels had come to an end. It is likely they never went farther than the Venetian province of Dalmatia. As for Marco, he never again set foot on the Silk Road, nor did he return to Asia and its sense of promise, magic, and danger. It seems that