The caravan route across the vast internal land of Asia was known as the Great Silk Road. Marco Polo and his family took it to China. Silks, mgs, spices, precious gems, and other luxury goods were carried by camel. Tire merchants rode horses.
Iarco Polo’s father was a Venetian merchant named Niccolo. He and Marco’s uncle had made a trip to China in 1260 when Marco was only six years old and returned with stories of the great wealth they had found there. On a second voyage in 1271 Marco went along, and he and his family spent 20 years traveling through India, southeast Asia, and
China under the patronage of the Chinese emperor, Kublai Khan. Other Christians— including merchants, missionaries, and Byzantine immigrants—were also present in the Orient at the time.
Marco Polo WTOte his memoirs after his return in 1292. He was then a prisoner in Genoa, where he met the romance writer RusticheUo of Pisa. Polo’s
Account indicates that both men wrote the memoirs. The book recounts the perils of the route and the customs Polo learnt along the way. For example, he described a drink he discovered in southern Asia: “In this country they make date wine with the addition of various spices, and very good it is. When it is drunk by men who are not used to it, it loosens the bowels and makes a
Thorough purge; but after that it does them good and makes them put on flesh.” Not having seen coal before, he wrote: “Let me tell you next of stones that bum like logs. It is a fact that throughout the province in Cathay [China] there is a sort of black stone, which is dug out of veins in the hillsides and bums like logs. These stones keep a fire going better than wood.”
The three Venetians spent 17 years in the service of the Khan and became immensely rich. They then wanted to return home, but the Khan was reluctant to let them go. Finally, however, he needed to transport a Chinese bride to the king of Persia by sea. Marco, his father, and his uncle undertook the task and from Persia made their way back to Venice.
Immortal soul would be endangered. How could the successor of St. Peter rule over such covetousness? Celestine began to have dreams in which he heard a voice saying that it was the will of God that he resign. Later, detractors of his successor, Boniface VIII (1294-1303), suggested that he had actually rigged up a speaking tube into Celestine’s chamber and intoned the words himself.
Boniface undertook to stop secular rulers from taxing the clergy by issuing a papal bull against the practice. Edward I of England responded by threatening to outlaw any subject who disobeyed him, and Philip
IV of France simply forbade any gold or silver to leave his domain, thereby effectively stopping the flow of money to the papacy. Not one to take defeat lightly, Boniface issued more bulls, which Philip took as insults to the French monarchy. In 1302 Philip called the first general meeting of the three estates: the nobility, the clergy, and the commons or third estate. The French king usually met these groups separately on a regional basis, but Philip brought together all representatives for what became known as the Estates General. At that first meeting, the king’s adviser, William de Nogaret, twisted the content of the bulls to make them seem even more insulting and persuaded the Estates General to back Phflip. Undaunted, Boniface issued yet another buU, this time claiming that all Christians were his subjects. Philip IV’s response was to send Nogaret to Italy to confront Boniface. Finding the pope at his vacation home in Anagni, he and some of the pope’s enemies from Rome captured Boniface. Realizing that a captive pope was just an embarrassment to them, however, they let him go. Boniface died a month later.
It is a measure of the low prestige of the papacy that Philip suffered no reprisals for his attack on Boniface. When the cardinals
Elected the archbishop ofBordeaux, a subject of the king of England, as the next pope, people thought he would favor the English. In fact, he rescinded the bulls against Philip and forgave all those who had taken part in the attack at Anagni. Rather than moving to Rome, the new pope stayed in France, settHng in the city of Avignon. This marked the beginning of the Avignon papacy; his successors also settling there.
The 13th century was a pivotal period in the political history ofEurope. The organization of representative bodies was the first tentative step toward constitutional monarchy. Universities provided educated and trained people not only for the clergy, but also for secular governments and towns. The breakup of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire changed the political map ofEurope for centuries. The island of Sicily remained under Aragon, but Naples became a separate city-state. The northern Italian towns also formed city-states that bickered and warred with each other. Italy would not be united into a single state until 1870. In Germany the tendency for the nobles, bishops, and towns to pursue their own policies gathered momentum with Frederick IPs abandonment of interest in the empire. The princes of the Holy Roman Empire finally met in the late 13th century and elected Rudolph of Hapsburg (reigned 1273-1291), a minor noble from Alsace, as emperor. The Hapsburg dynasty became a major power in the 16th century through a series of marriages that brought Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and even Burgundy and Spain under its control. But if the Hapsburgs gained a title, they lost con
Siderable territory. The Swiss formed a confederation and freed themselves from the Hapsburgs in 1291. Germany remained a loosely organized group of principalities, bishoprics, and towns under a Hapsburg emperor until Otto von Bismarck unified them in the late 19th century.
After the death of Frederick II and a period with no king, the German nobility elected Rudolf I of Hapsburg. He was not among the poweiful nobles and the German nobility thought that he would be unable to create problems for them or involve them in struggles in Italy. However, the Hapsburgs were more successful than anticipated. Largely though a series of strategic marriages they became a dominant power in central Europe.
World History
