Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [45]
In contrast to this sensual indulgence and anarchy was the life—“so very hard and rough”—led by the sensin, whom Marco calls “men of very great abstinence according to their custom.” They did everything in their power to avoid sensual indulgence in any form; even the food they ate was as bland as possible, “nothing but semolina and bran, that is, the husks that are left from wheat flour,” Polo learned. “They prepare it as we prepare it for swine; for they do take that semolina, that is, bran, and put it in hot water to make it soft and leave it to stay there some time till the whole head of grain is removed from the husk, and then they take it out and eat it washed like this without any substantial taste. And that is their food.” Nor did their self-discipline regarding food end there: “They fast many times a year”—a small loss, considering how restrictive their diet was—“and eat nothing in the world but bran and drink water, and stay much in prayer, so that is a hard life beyond measure.” No flicker of family life warmed this bleak existence of self-denial and spiritual devotion, for the monks “would not take a wife for anything in the world.” Even their clothes, black and blue, made of the “commonest and coarsest sackcloth,” seemed designed to inflict discomfort. As might be expected, they slept only on “very hard and cheap mats.”
“They lead a harder life than any men in the world,” Marco observes, more in despair than admiration.
AFTER CONTEMPLATING these instances of extreme self-denial, Marco considered the most repugnant practice of all: cremation. The custom, so alien to his sensibilities, paradoxically humanized its practitioners in his eyes; he realized that they fervently believed in the soul and in an afterlife. Having made this leap of imaginative identification, he entered into their spiritual life to the extent that he could. He noted the mourners’ absolute dependence on the calculations of astrologers and necromancers, who, he tells us, determined the time of cremation and burial according to the time of birth: “When the necromancer or astrologer has heard it, he makes his divination by diabolical arts and says to his kinsmen when he has done his arts and seen under what constellation, planet, and sign he was born, the day and the hour that the body must be burned.” The process could delay the burial for weeks, even months, during which time the deceased’s family had to keep the body in their home, “waiting for the planets to be propitious to them and not contrary, for they would never make burning till the diviners tell them that it is good to burn.”
To accommodate the astrologer’s—and the planets’—demands, family members constructed a painted coffin of thick boards, “well joined together,” placed the body inside it, and sealed the coffin with pitch and lime, covered it with silk, and fumigated it with camphor and other spices so that “the body does not stink at all to those of the house.” Each day that the body lay in residence, the family set out meals consisting of “bread and wine and flesh to eat and to drink just as if he were alive.” There was no way to rid the house of this demanding guest until the planets permitted; anyone who defied the astrologer’s ruling would “suffer great pain.”
The family lavished care even after the corpse was removed from the house: “The kinsmen of the dead have made a small house of canes or of rods with its porch, covered with the richest cloth of silk and gold according to their power, in the middle of the road. And when the dead is carried before this house so adorned they are stopped and the men of the house place the body on the ground at the foot of the pavilion, and lay wine and flesh enough on the ground before the dead, thinking that the spirit of the dead is somewhat refreshed and receives strength from it, since he must be present to see the body burned.”
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