Marco Polo's Will

Marco Polo's Will

Written on sheepskin parchment, the last will and testament of Marco Polo (1254-1324) is a fascinating and priceless historical document and a glimpse into the life and attitudes of the most famous traveler of the Middle Ages. The document was not signed by Polo, who was probably struggling to maintain conscious, but validated it through the signum manus practice of merely touching the document with witnesses. It cannot be said for certain when Polo died but it was likely sometime between the sunsets of the 8th or 9th of January 1324. The contents of the will are generally agreed to be a confirmation that Polo’s travels to China were in fact real and that his accounts can thus be generally trusted. Few other wills are as historically significant as that of the famous Marco Polo.

The Exciting Life of Marco Polo

In 1271, Marco Polo undertook the journey to Asia with his father and uncle. Their path drove them from Palestine across Persia, Pakistan, and the Pamir Mountains to China, to the court of the fabled Mongolian ruler Kublai Khan. Afterward the young Marco Polo won the trust of the Khan, he was allowed to undertake missions for him, which took him to the remotest regions of East Asia**. In 1292, Marco Polo took himself aboard ship across the Indian Ocean to Venice, where he remained and started a family. During the Venice’s war with Genoa, the pioneer was kept prisoner in a tower for three years together with a writer of the name Rusticello, who would preserve Polo’s adventures for posterity.

The Anticlimactic Death of a Legend

After returning to Venice, Polo eventually took over the family business ca. 1300 and assumed the typical life of a Venetian merchant. Little is recorded about him in the next two decades and was confined to his bed by 1323. The 70-year-old Polo was facing his own mortality in early January of 1324 when he summoned the priest-notary Giovanni Giustiniani to his home, who made notes in an awkward and careless script concerning donations to churches, debts forgiven, and the freeing of a Tatar servant who had accompanied him from Asia, who he left 100 lire of Venetian denari. An inventory of Polo’s possessions included precious gems and exotic items from the Far East, such as expensive musk. Interestingly, Polo left almost everything to his wife and three daughters, breaking with the custom of men without sons leaving their property to a male member of his extended family.