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Marco Polo, Rustichello of Pisa - The Travels of Marco Polo, 1
CHAPTER VII. HOW THE GREAT KAAN SENT THE TWO BROTHERS AS HIS ENVOYS TO
THE POPE.
When that Prince, whose name was CUBLAY KAAN, Lord of the Tartars all over the earth, and of all
the kingdoms and provinces and territories of that vast quarter of the world, had heard all that the
Brothers had to tell him about the ways of the Latins, he was greatly pleased, and he took it into his head
that he would send them on an Embassy to the Pope. So he urgently desired them to undertake this
mission along with one of his Barons; and they replied that they would gladly execute all his commands
as those of their Sovereign Lord. Then the Prince sent to summon to his presence one of his Barons
whose name was COGATAL, and desired him to get ready, for it was proposed to send him to the Pope
along with the Two Brothers. The Baron replied that he would execute the Lord's commands to the best
of his ability.
After this the Prince caused letters from himself to the Pope to be indited in the Tartar tongue,[NOTE 1]
and committed them to the Two Brothers and to that Baron of his own, and charged them with what he
wished them to say to the Pope. Now the contents of the letter were to this purport: He begged that the
Pope would send as many as an hundred persons of our Christian faith; intelligent men, acquainted with
the Seven Arts,[NOTE 2] well qualified to enter into controversy, and able clearly to prove by force of
argument to idolaters and other kinds of folk, that the Law of Christ was best, and that all other religions
were false and naught; and that if they would prove this, he and all under him would become Christians
and the Church's liegemen. Finally he charged his Envoys to bring back to him some Oil of the Lamp
which burns on the Sepulchre of our Lord at Jerusalem.[NOTE 3]
NOTE 1. - + The appearance of the Great Kaan's letter may be illustrated by two letters on so-called
Corean paper preserved in the French archives; one from Arghun Khan of Persia (1289), brought by
Buscarel, and the other from his son Oljaitu (May, 1305), to Philip the Fair. These are both in the
Mongol language, and according to Abel Remusat and other authorities, in the Uighur character, the
parent of the present Mongol writing. Facsimiles of the letters are given in Remusat's paper on
intercourse with Mongol Princes, in Mem. de l' Acad. des Inscript. vols. vii. and viii.,
reproductions in J. B. Chabot's Hist. de Mar Jabalaha III., Paris, 1895, and preferably in Prince
Roland Bonaparte's beautiful Documents Mongols, Pl. XIV., and we give samples of the two in
vol. ii.[1]
NOTE 2. - "The Seven Arts," from a date reaching back nearly to classical times, and down through the
Middle Ages, expressed the whole circle of a liberal education, and it is to these Seven Arts that the
degrees in arts were understood to apply. They were divided into the Trivium of Rhetoric, Logic,
and Grammar, and the Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Astronomy, Music, and Geometry. The 38th
epistle of Seneca was in many MSS. (according to Lipsius) entitled "L. Annaei Senecae Liber de
Septem Artibus liberalibus." I do not find, however, that Seneca there mentions categorically more
than five, viz., Grammar, Geometry, Music, Astronomy, and Arithmetic. In the 5th century we find the
Seven Arts to form the successive subjects of the last seven books of the work of Martianus Capella,
much used in the schools during the early Middle Ages. The Seven Arts will be found enumerated in the
verses of Tzetzes (Chil. XI. 525), and allusions to them in the mediaeval romances are endless.
Thus, in one of the "Gestes d'Alexandre," a chapter is headed "Comment Aristotle aprent a Alixandre
les Sept Arts." In the tale of the Seven Wise Masters, Diocletian selects that number of tutors for his
son, each to instruct him in one of the Seven Arts. In the romance of Erec and Eneide we have a
dress on which the fairies had portrayed the Seven Arts ( Franc. Michel, Recherches, etc. II. 82);
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