Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [71]
Aware of his own uncanny powers of perception, Marco lavishes praise on himself: “This noble youth seemed to have divine rather than human understanding.” Throughout the Mongol court, “there was nothing more wonderful told than of the wisdom of the noble youth, and they said among themselves, ‘If this youth lives for long, he cannot fail to be a man of great sense and of great valor.’” He can only sigh with recognition. “From this mission onward, they honored him not as a youth but as a man of very great age, and thenceforward the youth was called Master Marco Polo at court and so will our book call him in the future, though his virtue and wisdom deserve a much more worthy name than Master Marco. And this is really very right, for he was wise and experienced.”
Kublai Khan’s barons often tired of Marco’s preening. To them, he seemed an obsequious stranger who had inexplicably charmed his way into their leader’s affections. Marco recognized the jealousy he engendered at court. The Great Khan, he claims, “kept him so near to himself that many of the other barons had great vexation at it.”
AS HEIR to the throne of Genghis Khan, Kublai pursued his goal of becoming the “universal emperor,” beginning in the spiritual realm. “He does the same thing at the chief feasts of the Saracens, Jews, and idolaters,” Marco explains. “Being asked about the reason, Kublai Khan said, ‘There are four prophets who are worshipped and to whom everybody does reverence. The Christians say their God was Jesus Christ; the Saracens Mohammed; the Jews Moses, and the idolaters Sagamoni Burcan [the Buddha], who was the first to be represented as God in an idol; and I do honor and reverence all four.’”
Of course, there were major differences among the four faiths cited by Kublai Khan, and in some ways their doctrines are not even compatible, let alone comparable. The Saracens’ Islamic faith was resolutely monotheistic, while the Mongols promoted a shamanistic cosmology overflowing with deities and relying on religious tolerance. Beyond those theological differences loomed an unbridgeable cultural gap. The Muslims sweeping across Asia were intensely urban, putting down roots in cities, where they succeeded in commerce. The nomadic Mongols detested cities and destroyed those in their path. Even in the capital, Karakorum, the Mongols lived outside the walls, on the open Steppe, while Chinese, European, and Muslim inhabitants huddled within.
Kublai Khan ruled first by acknowledging differences, and then by leveling them. Although the khan felt most at home with Buddhism, which flourished all around him and was spreading quickly, he deftly persuaded Marco that of all these religions, Christianity took precedence. “The Great Khan showed he holds that Christian faith for the truer and better,” Marco insists, “because he says that it commands nothing that is not full of goodness and holiness.”
In their roles as “ambassadors to the Pope,” Marco’s father and uncle often asked Kublai Khan the obvious question: If he preferred Christianity, why not renounce all other faiths and declare himself a Christian?
“How do you wish me to make myself a Christian?” asked the khan. From his point of view, Christianity was but one more credo, and far from powerful in his realm. Even the sorcerers in his court had more influence. “You see the Christians who are in these parts are ignorant so that they do nothing and have no power,” Kublai said, “and you see that these idolaters do whatever they wish, and when I sit at the table the cups that are in the middle of the hall come to me full of wine or drink…without anyone touching them, and I drink with them. They compel the storm to go in whatever direction they please, and do many wonderful things, and as you know their idols speak and foretell