The Ascertained Genealogy Of The Traveller, However, Begins Only With His
Grandfather, Who Lived In The Early Part Of The 13th Century.
Two branches of the Polo Family were then recognized, distinguished by the
confini or Parishes in which they lived, as Polo of S. Geremia, and Polo
of S. Felice.
ANDREA POLO of S. Felice was the father of three sons,
MARCO, NICOLO, and MAFFEO. And Nicolo was the Father of our Marco.
[Sidenote: Claims to be styled noble.]
14. Till quite recently it had never been precisely ascertained whether
the immediate family of our Traveller belonged to the Nobles of Venice
properly so called, who had seats in the Great Council and were enrolled
in the Libro d'Oro. Ramusio indeed styles our Marco Nobile and
Magnifico, and Rusticiano, the actual scribe of the Traveller's
recollections, calls him "sajes et noble citaiens de Venece," but
Ramusio's accuracy and Rusticiano's precision were scarcely to be depended
on. Very recently, however, since the subject has been discussed with
accomplished students of the Venice Archives, proofs have been found
establishing Marco's personal claim to nobility, inasmuch as both in
judicial decisions and in official resolutions of the Great Council, he is
designated Nobilis Vir, a formula which would never have been used in
such documents (I am assured) had he not been technically noble.[5]
[Sidenote: Marco the Elder.]
15. Of the three sons of Andrea Polo of S. Felice, Marco seems to have
been the eldest, and Maffeo the youngest.[6] They were all engaged in
commerce, and apparently in a partnership, which to some extent held good
even when the two younger had been many years absent in the Far East.[7]
Marco seems to have been established for a time at Constantinople,[8] and
also to have had a house (no doubt of business) at Soldaia, in the Crimea,
where his son and daughter, Nicolo and Maroca by name, were living in
1280. This year is the date of the Elder Marco's Will, executed at Venice,
and when he was "weighed down by bodily ailment." Whether he survived for
any length of time we do not know.
[Sidenote: Nicolo and Maffeo commence their travels.]
16. Nicolo Polo, the second of the Brothers, had two legitimate sons,
MARCO, the Author of our Book, born in 1254,[9] and MAFFEO, of whose place
in the family we shall have a few words to say presently. The story opens,
as we have said, in 1260, when we find the two brothers, Nicolo and Maffeo
the Elder, at Constantinople. How long they had been absent from Venice we
are not distinctly told. Nicolo had left his wife there behind him; Maffeo
apparently was a bachelor. In the year named they started on a trading
venture to the Crimea, whence a succession of openings and chances,
recounted in the Introductory chapters of Marco's work, carried them far
north along the Volga, and thence first to Bokhara, and then to the Court
of the Great Kaan Kublai in the Far East, on or within the borders of
CATHAY.
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