Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [19]
Despite the misgivings of biblical scholars who say that the Holy Sepulcher may not be the actual site of Jesus’s burial, it continues to be venerated as such, and the Polos had no cause to doubt its authenticity as they pursued the necessary oil.
The setting (in what is now Old Jerusalem) was described by Ludolph von Suchem: “There dwell in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ancient Georgians who have the key of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, and food, alms, candles, and oil for lamps to burn round about the Holy Sepulchre are given them by pilgrims through a little window in the south door of the church.” Along with other pilgrims to this holiest of shrines, the Polos received their oil, for which they probably made a generous contribution. Then they returned to Acre as swiftly as they could.
LITTLE HAD CHANGED in the Polos’ absence. Teobaldo informed them that the cardinals had failed to elect a new pope, despite more than two years of deliberations. Feeling impatient and emboldened now that they had their consecrated oil, the travelers decided to leave immediately for the court of Kublai Khan rather than wait indefinitely for the election of the next pope.
They implored Teobaldo, who was, after all, the papal legate, to supply them with official documents that would satisfy the Mongol leader and explain that Pope Clement’s death and the lack of a successor had prevented them from carrying out their mission. “Sir,” they said to Teobaldo, as Marco recalls, “since we see that there is no Apostle, we wish to go back to the great lord”—the Venetians’ reverential expression for the Mongol leader—“because we know that against our will we have stayed too long and waited enough. And so with your good will we have presumed to go back. But one thing we wish to ask of you, may it please you to make privileges and letters certifying that we came to do the embassy to the Pope and found him dead, and have waited if there should be made another, and seeing that after so long a time none has been chosen, you as legate certify all that you have seen.”
As this speech reveals, the Polos knew how to negotiate with powerful officials, and they received the desired reply: “Since you wish to go back to the great lord it pleases me well.” Although it is doubtful that Teobaldo referred to Kublai Khan as “the great lord,” the legate was eager to use the Polos to establish diplomatic relations with the leader of the Mongols. Even better, Teobaldo promised to inform Kublai Khan as soon as the next pope was elected.
The Polos believed they had finally assembled everything required of them to return in safety to the Mongol leader, and they proceeded to the point of departure, the Armenian port of Layas, through which they had passed three years earlier on the way home. Despite its diminutive size, Marco reports, Layas bustled with “merchants from Venice, from Pisa, and from Genoa, and from all inland parts [who] come there [to] buy and sell their own things, and keep their warehouses in that city.”
JUST WHEN conditions approached the ideal, a rebellion broke out, as Marco explains: “A grandson of the Great Khan…went destroying all the roads of the desert, making many great trenches and pits; and this he did so that the armies should not be able to follow him.”
The uprising stranded the Polos in Layas. As they waited helplessly for the rebellion to subside, they were approached by a courier who brought astonishing news: on September 1, 1271, after thirty-four months of deliberation (the longest in the history of the Papacy), the cardinals had finally elected a new pope, and he was none other than their trusted friend and mentor Teobaldo of Piacenza—or Teobaldo Visconti. “The brothers had great joy at this,” Marco notes.
Yet the election led to another delay because the courier brought a summons from the newly elected pope. Once again, the Polo brothers returned to Acre, this time under armed escort. The trip was very much worth the trouble. Teobaldo, now the leading figure in Christendom, greeted them effusively and honored them