A manuscript of the "Devisement dou monde", also known as "Milione", was found. Although already mentioned in some catalogs, this work was unknown to scholars of Marco Polo, whose seven hundredth anniversary of his death falls this year, and absent from all previous cataloging of the work. This new find represents the 145th known codex of the famous Venetian traveler’s work.
The importance of this discovery is part of a large research project coordinated by Eugenio Burgio, Marina Buzzoni, and Samuela Simion of Ca’ Foscari University and Antonio Montefusco of Nancy University. The manuscript offers new and relevant information on the various versions and circulation of Marco Polo’s work, enriching the history of the text’s dissemination.
The history behind the widespread of The Million is one of the most embroilled (and passionate) of the medieval literature: the fame of The Million generated a wide range of translations, adaptations and rewritings, each reflecting the contexts in which it was read. Tha manuscript is almost an unknown witness of a translation made when Marco Polo was still alive and it is from this translation that resulted the versions with which The Million was known and read. It is about a new ring which allows to better understand the spreading and success of the text.
The manuscript is preserved at the Biblioteca Diocesana Ludovico Jacobilli in Foligno with the signature of Jacobilli A. 11.9, conveying the translation the scholars known as VA, born within the first quarter of the three-hundred ,in the north-eastern of Italy. The importance of this translation lies above all in the extent of its dissemination: indeed, VA’s text was subjected to numerous translations, both Latin and vernacular, so much so that most of the surviving manuscripts are, directly or indirectly, an emanation of it.It is therefore the version in which Marco Polo’s book was most widely read and known in Europe.
It had an early circulation in the area of Emilia and Lombardy, although little is known about the environment in which it was produced. Moreover, in this manuscript the translator does not hesitate to cut out heterodox or scabrous information, which suggests that it came from a religious environment.
Pointed out by Fabio Soncin, a doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies at Ca’ Foscari University Venice (under the supervision of Marina Buzzoni, PI of a PRIN PNRR 2022 project), who had viewed it during a visit to Foligno, it is librarian Ivan Petrini from the Foligno Library who gives an initial presentation: it is a fifteenth-century manuscript, written by a single hand in a humanistic minuscule; it is a paper of 110 papers, lacking the initial papers and some internal papers. The document’s origin and history remain uncertain, but it is known that it is part of the collection donated by Ludovico Jacobilli (1598- 1664) to the library between 1662 and 1664, but it is unclear where and when the scholar from Foligno came into possession of it.
Samuela Simion of Ca’ Foscari University confirmed its importance and identified the VA translation within it. In the coming months, further study of the manuscript is expected in order to place it more precisely within the tradition of the Polean work.
This finding comes just days before the conference "Marco Polo, the Book and Asia. Research Perspectives Twenty Years Later", organized by Ca’ Foscari University as part of the official celebrations for the 700th anniversary of the death of the Venetian explorer, and supported by the National Committee and the Ministry of Culture, with the sponsorship of Rai Veneto and Rai Cultura. One session of the conference will be devoted to the digital edition of the great traveler’s work.
Among the activities dedicated to Marco Polo there is also the pubblication of the first digital edition, available to the scholars of the whole world and published by Edizioni Ca' Foscari in open access and open source.
The digital world manages to better exploit than the paper work the intrinsic mobility to the text spread by many manuscripts edited in many different languages (at least 11), belonging to different cultural traditions. For this digital edition, 12 editorial staffs have been chosen and a further version of the text (Fr2) given in a synoptic presentation ( that is, come up beside one another). The digitial work, which follows the international coding standards, also offer a single critical text, in English to facilitate its spreading both within the scholars' community and the passionate and general public. Is is completed by a glossary of words which have an important cultural value, in particular those words which designate people, animals and things connected to the East, of interactive maps of those places touched by Marco Polo in his long journay; of bibliographical information of potential interest for the reader.
