[12] The last view is in substance, I find, suggested by Cicogna (ii.
389).
The matter is of some interest, because in the Will of the younger
Maffeo, which is extant, he makes a bequest to his uncle (Avunculus)
Jordan Trevisan. This seems an indication that his mother's name may
have been Trevisan. The same Maffeo had a daughter Fiordelisa. And
Marco the Elder, in his Will (1280), appoints as his executors, during
the absence of his brothers, the same Jordan Trevisan and his own
sister-in-law Fiordelisa ("Jordanum Trivisanum de confinio S.
Antonini: et Flordelisam cognatam meam"). Hence I conjecture that this
cognata Fiordelisa (Trevisan?) was the wife of the absent Nicolo,
and the mother of Maffeo. In that case of course Maffeo and Marco were
the sons of different mothers. With reference to the above suggestion
of Nicolo's second marriage in 1269 there is a curious variation in a
fragmentary Venetian Polo in the Barberini Library at Rome. It runs,
in the passage corresponding to the latter part of ch. ix. of
Prologue: "i qual do fratelli steteno do anni in Veniezia aspettando
la elletion de nuovo Papa, nel qual tempo Mess. Nicolo si tolse moier
et si la laso graveda." I believe, however, that it is only a
careless misrendering of Pipino's statement about Marco's birth.
[13] [Major Sykes, in his remarkable book on Persia, ch. xxiii.
