But The Date Alone, 11th
March, 1324, Is Sufficient To Raise The Gravest Doubts As To This
Signature Being That Of Our Marco.
And further examination, as I learn
from a friend at Venice, has shown that the same name occurs in
connection with analogous entries on several subsequent occasions up
to the middle of the century.
I presume that this Marco Polo is the
same that is noticed in our Appendix B, II. as a voter in the
elections of the Doges Marino Faliero and Giovanni Gradenigo. I have
not been able to ascertain his relation to either branch of the Polo
family; but I suspect that he belonged to that of S. Geremia, of which
there was certainly a Marco about the middle of the century.
[24] "Under the angiporta (of S. Lorenzo) [see plate] is buried that
Marco Polo surnamed Milione, who wrote the Travels in the New World,
and who was the first before Christopher Columbus to discover new
countries. No faith was put in him because of the extravagant things
that he recounted; but in the days of our Fathers Columbus augmented
belief in him, by discovering that part of the world which eminent men
had heretofore judged to be uninhabited." (Venezia ... Descritta,
etc., f. 23 v.) Marco Barbaro attests the same inscription in his
Genealogies (copy in Museo Civico at Venice).
[25] Cicogna, II. 385.
[26] Lazari, xxxi.
[27] In the first edition I noticed briefly a statement that had reached
me from China that, in the Temple at Canton vulgarly called "of the
500 gods," there is a foreign figure which from the name attached had
been supposed to represent Marco Polo!
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