Dog-headedness

Folklores from all over the world include tales of dog-headed humanoids. The phenomenon is referred to as cynocephaly, from the Greek words for "dog" and "head."

The Greeks may have been influenced by Egyptian gods with canine heads, and not just the jackal-headed Anubis; Wepwawet (originally a war deity) had a wolf head, and Duamutef (a son of Horus) had a jackal's head. The Greek physician Ctesias wrote two books in the 5th century BCE, Indica and Persica, about Persian and Indian lands, of a tribe of Cynocephali:

They speak no language, but bark like dogs, and in this manner make themselves understood by each other. Their teeth are larger than those of dogs, their nails like those of these animals, but longer and rounder. They inhabit the mountains as far as the river Indus. Their complexion is swarthy. They are extremely just, like the rest of the Indians with whom they associate. They understand the Indian language but are unable to converse, only barking or making signs with their hands and fingers by way of reply... They live on raw meat. They number about 120,000.

Other Ancient Greek writers including Herodotus, likely influenced by Ctesias, reinforced this knowledge, encouraging the Middle Ages to accept that there were strange races living beyond Europe. (Greek writers also say there was a type of monkey that was cynocephalic; we now assume they had seen baboons.)

With this "knowledge" in hand, it was easy to accept that Cynocephali would appear in other accounts, such as that of two dog-headed saints, Ahrakas and Augani, who served the Coptic Saint Mercurius (3rd century).

The best-known dog-headed personage was St. Christopher, who was sometimes depicted in the Eastern Orthodox tradition as dog-headed. This was likely a misunderstanding of an expanded history for him that referred to him as a Canaanite; this was mis-read as "canine-ish" and resulted in him being portrayed as a Cynocephalus who came from their tribe.

St. Augustine of Hippo in his The City of God addressed the topic of the Cynocephali. He accepted that they might not exist, but if they did exist, were the human (which to him meant mortal and rational). If they were both mortal and rational, then they were human, and therefore could have come from nowhere but a line of descendants from Adam.

Ratramnus (died c.868), a Frankish theologian, was concerned about the Cynocephali, because if they were human, then it was obligatory to bring Christianity to them. 

Even Marco Polo mentions them:

Angamanain is a very large Island. The people are without a king and are Idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. And I assure you all the men of this Island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in the face they are all just like big mastiff dogs! They have a quantity of spices; but they are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch, if not of their own race.

The one medieval writer who personally encountered anything approaching Cynocephali was Ibn Battuta (who was mentioned in passing a week ago regarding the Richest Man of All Time):

Fifteen days after leaving Sunaridwan we reached the country of the Barahnakar, whose mouths are like those of dogs. This tribe is a rabble, professing neither the religion of the Hindus nor any other. They live in reed huts roofed with grasses on the seashore, and have abundant banana, areca, and betel trees. Their men are shaped like ourselves, except that their mouths are shaped like those of dogs; this is not the case with their womenfolk, however, who are endowed with surpassing beauty.

Between India and Sumatra is a tribe, the Mentawai, who practice the art of tooth sharpening. He may have encountered them.

Dog-headed humanoids were widespread in literature, mentioned in the Nowell Codex (that contains Beowulf); in a Welsh poem where King Arthur fights them in Edinburgh; lamented at by Charlemagne (in his biography) that he never had a chance to go to war against such a foe; in a Flemish Dominican's popular encyclopedic work corroborating their existence; and many more examples. After the European discovery of the continents west of the Atlantic Ocean, assumptions that the Cynocephali would be found were renewed.

But enough of that. Lots of options to move on from here, but I want to explore that Flemish Dominican who wrote some works that became very popular, based on the number of surviving manuscripts. Next time we will talk about Thomas of Cantimpré.

The Tomb of the Three

The Shrine of the Three Kings

The Three Kings, or Magi, appear suddenly in the Gospel of Matthew and just as quickly disappear. That paucity of information on them did not, however, prevent Christendom from tracking them down and making relics out of them.

It is supposed that they were so moved by their experience in the Gospel that they converted to Christianity, either on their own when they returned to their home country or later in life when they first encountered one of the Apostles.

Marco Polo tells us that he was shown their tomb:

In Persia is the city of Saba, from which the Three Magi set out and in this city they are buried, in three very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And above them there is a square building, beautifully kept. The bodies are still entire, with hair and beard remaining.

This must be untrue, however, since clearly they have relics that were kept originally in Constantinople, where they (along with countless other relics) were gathered by the Empress (later Saint) Helena. They were then offered to Bishop Eustorgius I of Milan by Constantine. It is the biography of Eustorgius that tells their history.

They stayed in Milan until Barbarossa took them and gave them to the Archbishop of Cologne, who built Cologne Cathedral to house their golden reliquary. The foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral was laid on 15 August, 1248.

Asbestos

Lovely ceiling tiles at Cleeve Abbey with asbestos in them

Pliny the Elder has a chapter in his Natural History on something he calls "live" linen:

It is generally known as “live” linen, and I have seen, before now, napkins that were made of it thrown into a blazing fire, in the room where the guests were at table, and after the stains were burnt out, come forth from the flames whiter and cleaner than they could possibly have been rendered by the aid of water. It is from this material that the corpse-cloths of monarchs are made, to ensure the separation of the ashes of the body from those of the pile. [Book XIX, Chap.4]

The Greeks, we are told, call this material asbestinon* ["inextinguishable"]. It was used to wrap royalty for their funeral pyres, because their ashes could be kept separate from the wood ashes. Charlemagne also used to entertain his guests by throwing the tablecloth into the fire after the meal, then removing it with all the stains burned off. Marco Polo was also shown cloth that whitened in fire and did not burn.

Asbestos was not just for cute tricks. It was used as insulation for armor, and in 9th and 10th century Afghanistan it was used to eat off. It also promoted belief in miracles:

the most fascinating use of asbestos during the period was as a magical cross sold by traveling merchants.  The crosses, cut from asbestos, looked like very old, worn wood and were advertised by merchants as "true crosses" made directly from the wood of the cross upon which Jesus Christ of Nazareth died.  To illustrate the magical cross's powers, the merchants would throw the wood into a fire where it would remain undamaged. [link]

The health risks of asbestos did not escape notice, however. Pliny did note that slaves who worked weaving asbestos had lung problems. Romans—who called it  amiantus, "unpolluted" (because of its ability to come clean from a fire)—understood that buying slaves who worked with asbestos was a bad return on investment, because they died younger than other slaves.

*"Asbestos" is used to describe six silicate minerals with thin fibrous crystals that can be woven into thread and thence into cloth.

Kublai Khan

Today is the anniversary of the death of Kublai Khan (1215 - 1294), grandson of Genghis Khan. During his 34-year reign (he was crowned on 5 May 1260, succeeding his brother, Möngke Khan), he accomplished many notable things.

One was establishing the Yuan dynasty and extending his rule over one-fifth of the inhabited land area of the world. Before his death he had become not only the ruler of Mongolia but also the first non-Chinese Emperor of China.

He was known for curiosity about other religions and countries that led to great tolerance of foreigners. The reputation of Tibetan monks as healers inspired him to add a Tibetan priest to his retinue. He showed great interest in Christianity, requesting that the pope send him 100 priests and some relics of Christ. (He didn't get them.) He was a Buddhist who did not appreciate Taoism, but he did show respect for Taoism, putting Taoist temples under the jurisdiction of his "Academy of Scholarly Worthies." Kublai also had 30 Muslims in his administration, some of whom were governors of provinces.

He was attentive to infrastructure needs, rebuilding the Grand Canal (at 1104 miles, the longest canal in the world, linking the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers). He also repaired highways and public buildings. He extended taxation to Mongol merchants.

Paper currency had been used by this time for a generation or two, but Kublai established a uniform currency throughout his territory. Based on silver and gold, the paper money could be converted at any time. Later, however, Kublai needed to produce more money for some of his plans, and issued new notes that were not backed by precious metals. This example of fiat money (possibly the first in the world) would always be accepted by the government.

Marco Polo's Co-author

Page from Chapter CXXIII

Everyone is familiar with the story of Marco Polo, who traveled to the Far East, had amazing adventures, and returned home to be put in prison in Genoa because of local wars. In prison, he wrote a book of his travels, telling of things that were marvels to Western Europe.

What most people don't know is that Polo was not in prison alone. A fellow inmate, Rustichello da Pisa, was an author, without whose help what we call The Travels of Marco Polo might never have come to be.

We know little of the 13th century Rustichello. He was a native of Pisa, and might have wound up in a Genoese prison after the 1284 Battle of Meloria. He would have been there a long time when Polo was imprisoned in 1298 after the Battle of Curzola.

Rustichello had previously written a romance, called alternately Compilatione ["The Compilation"] or Roman de Roi Artus ["The Romance of King Arthur"]. It was a French version of a work in the possession of King Edward I of England. Rustichello must have had access to it while Edward passed through Italy in the early 1270s on his way to the Eighth Crusade.

But what was his involvement in Marco Polo's tale? Was he simply the scribe? According to some who read the book and Rustichello's other writings:

Everyone who studies Marco Polo acknowledges that Rustichello’s fiction-writing techniques and habits show up in the book, but critics writing in English tend to stop with a very few observations that are repeated faithfully from one study to another. [source]

He is also likely the reason that the original version was written in French, the language of romance literature, rather than Italian or Latin. The original title was Divisament dou monde ["Description of the world"]; an Italian edition was also called Il Milione ["The Million"}, but we do not know if that was intended to denote a million new things, or a million lies.

The Bezant

Coins from Kingdom of Jerusalem in British Museum
(l. to r.) dinar (1162-75), Arabic bezant (1140-80),
Christian bezant (1250-) [source]

Yesterday's post mentioned 10,000 bezants being paid as a bride price. Let's discuss the bezant.

Discussions of items of currency in history break down into two parts: "Where did it come from?" and "What is it worth?" The first part is far easier to deal with. You might guess that the name bezant comes from its relationship to its place of origin: Byzantium.* Gold coins could be called after a particular place because they were not that common: few places minted them, silver and bronze being the more common metals used (hence, of course, the traditional use of gold, silver, and bronze for medals in competition). Gold coins were used for special occasions or for attention-getting: gifts, tributes, awards or, as we saw yesterday, impressing your fiancé's guardian.

Gold coinage started in antiquity in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean and slowly spread westward as trade increased. Of European merchants, those from Italy had the most familiarity with eastern gold coins from the east and used the term bezant to refer to gold coins from Egypt (the dinar in the above picture); Marco Polo used bezant to refer to the gold coins he saw in East Asia.

What was a bezant worth? That depended on a lot of factors, and there was no "gold market" like we have today that monitors fluctuations in price. The best we have in most cases is a comparison to other coins. Marco Polo describes one bezant as worth 20 groats or 133.33 tornesel. This tells us only that gold coins were proportionally far more valuable than other metals. The gold coins that were minted in England in the 10th and 11th centuries were decreed to be worth nine times the value of a similar-sized silver coin. Suffice it to say that any gold coin had much more purchasing power than most coins in circulation that the average person would be likely to use on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we do not have lists of prices of everyday items or services from history...but we do have some, which we will look at tomorrow.


*Byzantium was re-named Constantinople in 330CE; later, of course, it became Istanbul in 1930. Enjoy the song.

Prester John, Part 2

Prester John on his throne

Almost 100 manuscripts exist that are part of the legend of Prester John, mostly copies of the letter supposedly written from him to one or more popes. The European Middle Ages was fascinated by the exotic tales of the Far East, and excited at the idea of a powerful Christian Priest-King responsible for promoting Christianity in areas not yet reached by western missionaries.

So what was the world of Prester John like?

He ruled over 72 countries, for one thing. In those lands could be found men who lived for 200 years, men with horns on their foreheads or three eyes, unicorns, and women warriors who fought on horseback. Several of the features of his world were apparently "borrowed" from the 3rd century Romance of Alexander, such as cannibals, elephants, headless men whose faces were on their torsos, pygmies, rivers that flowed out of Eden, and the fountain of youth.

Inhabitants of Prester John's land

Exactly where these fabulous creatures and locations could be found was debatable. Marco Polo identified Prester John's kingdom with a Nestorian Christian tribe in Mongolia. India was often listed as his location, but India was a vague concept to most Europeans. A legend that Ethiopia was Christian led many to assume that Prester John ruled that land. The Portugese on their 15th century maritime excursions searched the coasts of Africa hoping to find access to his kingdom. Once the globe had been circumnavigated in the 1600s and Africa and India were discovered to be lacking in any ruler named Prester John, the legend was given up.

Prester John, Part 1

That "inaccessible area" in Asia mentioned in the Finding Paradise entry fascinated Europeans. Knowledge of the lands to the east was rare, and accounts of travels in that direction were devoured. Marco Polo's tales were only one example.

The 3rd century apocryphal text Acts of Thomas tells of St. Thomas and his attempts to convert India to Christianity. Although not included in the definitive collection of books of the Bible, it was still copied and read (Gregory of Tours made a copy), and sparked the imagination: what if there were a thriving community of Christians in exotic India, cut off from Europe and desirous of contact?

In the 12th century, a German chronicler and bishop called Otto of Friesling recorded that in 1144 he had met a bishop from Syria at the court of Pope Eugene III. Bishop Hugh's request for aid in fighting Saracens resulted in the Second Crusade. During the conversation, however, Bishop Hugh mentioned a Nestorian Christian (Nestorians and their origin were briefly mentioned here) who was a priest and a king, named Prester John, tried to help free Jerusalem from infidels, bringing help from further east. He had an emerald scepter, and was a descendant of one of the Three Magi who brought gifts at Jesus' birth.

The idea of Prester John, a fabulously wealthy and well-connected Christian potentate poised to help bridge the gap between West and East, captured the imagination. A letter purporting to be from Prester John appeared in 1165. The internal details of the letter suggest that the author knew the Acts of Thomas as well as the 3rd century Romance of Alexander.

The letter became enormously popular; almost a hundred copies still exist. It was copied and embellished and translated over and over. Modern analysis of the evolution of the letter and its vocabulary suggest an origin in Northern Italy, possibly by a Jewish author.

At the time, however, no analysis was needed for people to act. Pope Alexander III decided to write a letter to Prester John and sent it on 27 September 1177 via his physician, Philip. Philip was not heard from again, but that did not deter the belief in Prester John  at all.

Gregory X

Today is the anniversary of the death of Pope Gregory X. He has already been mentioned in Daily Medieval, but let's take a closer look at his career.

Pope Gregory X is presented Kublai's letter by the Polos

His election as pope came after a three-year vacancy (1268-1271) in the position. The cardinals were split between French and Italian factions. Charles of Anjou, younger son of King Louis IX of France, had taken over Sicily and started to interfere with Italian politics. The French cardinals were fine with this; the Italian cardinals were not. The cardinals met in the town of Viterbo and vote after vote produced no clear candidate. Finally, the citizens of Viterbo locked them into the room where they met, removed the roof to expose them to the weather, and allowed them nothing but bread and water.

On the third day, they picked a pope.

Cardinal Teobaldo Visconti was Italian, but had lived most of his life in the extreme north and was unaffected by the recent Sicilian difficulties. He was chosen as a compromise candidate.

Visconti was not even aware that he was considered as a candidate; he wasn't there. He was with Edward I of England on the Ninth Crusade as a papal legate. While there, he had been met by the Polos, who had letters from Kublai Khan for the pope.

When word came to him that he was the new pope, his first act was to request aid for the Crusade. He then sailed for Italy and called the Second Council of Lyons to discuss the East-West Schism and corruption in the Church. He also heard from the Polos again, who pressed him (now that he was pope) on Khan's request for 100 priests to come east and explain Christianity. The new pope, who took the name Gregory X, could only offer a few Dominicans (who tarted out on the long journey, but lost heart and turned back).

Gregory did establish relations with the Mongols, however, when the Mongol ruler Abaqa Khan (1234 - 1282) sent a delegation to the Council of Lyons to discus military cooperation between the Mongols and Europe for a Crusade. Plans were made, money was raised, and then Gregory died on 10 January 1276. The project failed.

"The Most Popular Poet in America"

Today is the 805th anniversary of Rumi's birth. On the 800th anniversary, in a story done by BBC News online, he was referred to as "the most popular poet in America." What journey took a medieval Muslim mystic to that title?

Marco Polo described the city of Balkh in what is now northern Afghanistan as a "noble and great city and a seat of learning"—this despite its destruction 50 years earlier by Genghis Khan. Since the mid-8th century, Balkh had been a center for Persian-Islamic culture, drawing scholars and theologians from near and far. One of them was a theologian, jurist and mystic named Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, the latest of several generations of jurists, who was also known later as Sultan al-Ulama, "Sultan of the Scholars."

Bahā ud-Dīn Walad fled Balkh at the approach of the Mongols, taking his family westward until finally reaching an area that had been under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire and was still called Rûm. There he became head of a madrassa, which upon his death was inherited by his son, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī. Because the son lived in Rûm, however, he is usually known today as Rumi.

Rumi started in his father's footsteps as a jurist; he preached and issued fatwas.* A meeting with the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi inspired him to become an ascetic; when Shams disappeared (or was murdered; sources disagree) a few years later, Rumi was devastated. His emotions found expression in poetry. Once he started writing, he didn't stop; the Mathnawi has been called his greatest poetic work.

Although a devout Muslim (his poetry includes hundreds of lines from the Quran), his work is considered to have universal appeal. According to the BBC:

With his injunctions of tolerance and love, he has universal appeal, says Abdul Qadir Misbah, a culture specialist in the Balkh provincial government.
"Whether a person is from East or West, he can feel the roar of Rumi," he says.

The madrassa where Rumi taught

"When a religious scholar reads the Mathnawi, he interprets it religiously. And when sociologists study it, they say how powerful a sociologist Rumi was. When people in the West study it, they see that it's full of emotions of humanity."[source]

His poetry has an evolutionary strain, in that he saw a progression in the universal soul working through levels of existence. The Muslim philosopher Al Farabi introduced this idea to Islam, and it finds expression in Rumi in lines like:

I died as a mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels bless'd; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones,
To Him we shall return.

Rumi's poetry has inspired much of classical Iranian and Afghan music, and has been translated into languages all over the world. Madonna, Goldie Hawn, Philip Glass and Demi Moore have done performances of his poetry.

As for Rumi in his country of origin: the Taliban outlawed music, and Sufism didn't fit their view of Islam. Since their ouster from political power in Afghanistan, Rumi has had a resurgence.

*Although in the West fatwas have a bad name, they are treated differently in the Sunni and Shia sects. Rumi was Sunni, and so his fatwas were non-binding.

Got Silk?

Silk was not a medieval invention. According to Chinese tradition, Empress Si-Ling-Chi in 2460 BCE watched silkworms spinning cocoons; she unwound several cocoons, then ran the strands together to make thread, then wove the result into cloth to make a robe for Emperor Huang-Ti.

The Silk Road routes

Unverifiable, but it may very well be true. What is slightly more historically documented is that China guarded the secret of this magnificent fabric for centuries, but was willing to manufacture the cloth and sell it for very high prices to others. Wealthy people from other countries would gladly pay large sums to purchase it—soft and smooth, light to wear, dyed easily—so knowledge of this material spread. India somehow figured out the secret and was manufacturing its own silk by the 2nd century CE.

Ezekiel mentions silk, which means it was known to the Middle East in the 6th century BCE. Aristotle mentions the process of dealing with the cocoons, but the knowledge must have been lost for awhile, because it seems to be a mystery to that part of the world centuries later. We are told that Julius Caesar (100-15 March 44 BCE) had silk curtains. It is thought that the Romans first encountered silk in the hands of the Parthians in the first century BCE. By the end of the 1st century CE, Rome was trading for silk with the Parthians; we don't know what kind of "mark up" the Parthians were putting on the silk that they got from the East, but it was probably substantial. Although more than silk was traded between the East and West, silk was one of the few things only available from the Far East, and so the collection of interconnected trade routes from China and India to Byzantium and Alexandria became known as the "Silk Road."

Of course, it is cheaper to manage production yourself, and the Byzantine scholar Procopius (500-565 CE) tells us how some Nestorian monks* gave the Emperor Justinian the secret: the thread comes from silkworms that could not survive transportation, but their cocoons would travel well if insulated in dung and fed on mulberry leaves when hatched. Byzantium created a thriving silk industry and supplied Europe for centuries. The silk factories were staffed by all-female crews, and so were called gynaecea—after the name given to the section of a Roman or Greek home devoted to women.

Marco Polo on the Silk Road

The cycle of industrial espionage continued, however, when Muslims, who learned the secret of silk when they conquered Persia, took over Sicily and Spain. By the 13th century, Europe was producing its own silk and purchasing less from Byzantium. By the 15th century, France had its own factories. This was necessary, according to Louis XI, because purchasing silk from Italy created a trade deficit for France of 40-50,000,000 gold écus.**

Silk is different from cotton or wool in that it is not spun; rather, two or more strands are twisted together. To produce this, new techniques were invented. The simple reel is said to have been first devised for holding strands of silk, which could be up to a mile long. Two reels would be set up to unwind simultaneously so that their strands could be twisted together in a technique called "throwing."

The Middle Ages loved silk so much that a whole new vocabulary was created to describe its uses in fabrics:

• alexander - a striped silk
• baldachin - a warp of gold thread with a woof of silk
• begin - 14th century rayed silk fabric
• camlet - half silk/half hair (such as angora)
• cendal - woven silk material
• ecarlate - high-quality silk
• gauze - semi-transparent silk (from 13th century onward)
• imperial - silk with gold thread; originally from Byzantium, later called baldachin
• osterni - silk dyed purple
• samite - silk with interwoven gold or silver threads
• sarcenet - thin soft silk with slight sheen; sometimes called "shot"
• tartaire - silk from Tartary

...and in all these centuries, it hasn't lost its luster.

*Remember the Nestorians? They were a branch of Christianity deemed heretical a century before Procopius, who made their home in the East where William Rubruck ran into them.
**Story of the Silk Road by Yiping Zhang, p.146 (I don't normally bog things down with citations—I assume you trust me!—but this number was so ... impressive that I felt the need to point to a source. It may be a huge exaggeration.

Marco! Polo!

Today is the 758th anniversary (according to tradition) of the birth of Marco Polo (1254-1324). Son of a wealthy Venetian merchant who traded with the Middle East, Marco might have simply grown up to follow his father's footsteps, but he instead followed a different set of footsteps: at the age of 17 he accompanied his father and uncle to Asia.

At the time, Marco's father and uncle had just returned from a trip to the East. They brought with them a letter from Kublai Khan of the Mongols (1215-1294), to be delivered to the Pope, requesting 100 missionaries and oil from the lamp of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. In 1275, after a three-year journey, the two Polos and Niccolo's son Marco delivered the oil to the Khan. There, we are told, the Khan took a liking to Marco. Marco returned 24 years later to find Venice at war with Genoa; Marco was imprisoned by Genoan authorities because of his participation in a naval battle, and spent his time in prison dictating an account of his travels. The rest, as they say, is history.

But what about history before Marco?

Trade between East and West at this time benefited from the Mongol Expansion (c.1207-1360), because it broke the monopoly on trade routes enjoyed by the Islamic Caliphate. Marco's family was well situated for these travels. His grandfather, Andrea Polo of San Felice, was noble and well-off. Andrea set up his three sons (Marco, young Marco's father Niccolo, and Matteo*) in commerce. They had offices in Constantinople and at Sudak on the Black Sea. Niccolo and Matteo had met Kublai Khan when, on a trading expedition, they met up with his envoys who were returning from visiting the Khan's brother Hulagu in Persia. The Polos were persuaded to make the journey to Cathay to meet the Khan. It was Kublai's first meeting with Europeans, and he was fascinated by what they had to tell him about Europe and the Latin West. He asked them to take his request to their Pope; he wanted to learn all about Christianity and the liberal arts of the growing university system.

Marco Polo's travels

Upon returning home, the brothers discovered that Niccolo's wife had died, leaving Marco to be raised by relatives. Pope Clement IV had died and a new pope had not yet been chosen. After two more years with still no papal successor in place, the brothers decided they could wait no longer, and headed East with young Marco. They stopped at Acre and consulted with the papal legate Teobaldo Visconti, who gave them letters for the Khan explaining why their commission failed. They continued East.

Not long after, however, they learned that Teobaldo himself had been named pope, and they turned back to Acre and managed to get communications to and from him. Now, as Pope Gregory X (c.1210-1276), he could only offer a couple Dominicans. These Dominicans lost heart in Armenia when they ran into the troops of a sultan, and turned back for home.

The Khan was pleased to see the Venetians, who did not return to Europe for many years. According to Marco's account, not only did he see coal and paper money for the first time, but he was made governor of Yang-chow, with 27 cities under him, for three years, and given several missions by the Khan to visit other areas in Asia and return with information. It was more than 20 years before the Khan gave them permission to return home.

People of his era had a difficult time believing the stories he told. Later scholars had an even more difficult time: why did he never mention chopsticks in all that time? Or the Great Wall? But the Great Wall was a work in progress, much of which was only built after Marco's time there. And perhaps chopsticks weren't an impressive enough difference to bother reporting; after all, his was a Europe still only slowly adopting the use of the fork.

But, embellishments or not, his name is famous—even if children who play it in a swimming pool have no idea who he was. (And some day soon I'll tell you about the "Reverse Marco Polo," Rabban bar Sauma.)

*Half the sources call him "Maffeo"

Fireworks

In honor of Independence Day in the USA...

Everyone knows that to discuss the history of fireworks means talking about China and Marco Polo (1254-1324), but the real history of fireworks in the European Middle Ages may start with Roger Bacon (1214-1294).

Bacon was a Franciscan Friar who spent time at Oxford and may have studied under Robert Grossteste. He has been called the first user of the scientific method, but more careful study of his works suggests that his conclusions and theories were the result of "thought experiments" like many other scholars, instead of actual scientific experimentation. Although Oxford's fairly careful and complete records of degrees given do not show that Bacon ever earned a doctorate, he was nicknamed Doctor Mirabilis (wonderful doctor) for his ideas.

Many volumes have been filled about Bacon, his ideas and discoveries, but today we are interested in gunpowder. At the request of Pope Clement IV, Bacon wrote his seven-part Opus Maius (Greater Work) which discussed (among other things) his thoughts on philosophy, theology, and certain scientific experiments. We know that a contemporary and fellow Franciscan, William Rubruck (c.1220-c.1293), visited the Mongols and witnessed the use of gunpowder in the form of firecrackers. Perhaps Rubruck brought some back. The relevant passage in the Opus Maius is:

We have an example of these things (that act on the senses) in that children's toy which is made in many [diverse] parts of the world; i.e. a device no bigger than one's thumb. From the violence of that salt called saltpetre [together with sulphur and willow charcoal, combined into a powder] so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, no more than a bit of parchment [containing it], that we find [the ear assaulted by a noise] exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash brighter than the most brilliant lightning.

The "no more than a bit of parchment containing it" reminds me of these. He speaks of this again in his Opus Tertium (the Third Work; and yes, there had been an intermediate Opus Minus, the Lesser Work):

Then wonders can be done by explosive substances. There is one used for amusement in various parts of the world made of powder of saltpeter and sulphur and charcoal of hazelwood. For when a roll of parchment about the size of a finger is filled with this powder, it produces a startling noise and flash. If a large instrument were used, the noise and flash would be unbearable; if the instrument were made from solid material, the violence would be much greater.

These are the earliest references in the English-speaking world to gunpowder and fireworks. Whether Bacon ever made his own gunpowder is unknown, however. Some articles will tell you that he could, and encrypted the knowledge in order to prevent its misuse. Claims that Bacon hid the formula for gunpowder in his works cannot be substantiated, however. He seems to know what goes into the formula, but not necessarily in what proportion.  The secret numbers that some modern manuscript detectives claim to have found in his writings produce the wrong ratio for gunpowder to do more than smoke.

Enjoy your day.