PÖLLMANN, ANSGAR. — German Benedictine writer, b. on 21 Sept. 1871 at Hechingen (Hohenzollern), lived for many years in the monastery of Beuron, d. at Eltville am Rhein on 20 June 1933.
He is known as the founder and editor of the religious poetry journal Gottesminne, published from 1903 to 1907 and from 1911 to 1913, and especially as a lyric poet. His principal collections, Sonnenschein (1902), Kleine Lieder (1904), and Maria vom deutschem Siege (1914), testify to original inspiration, clarity of feeling, and modernity of conception and form. A military chaplain during the First World War, he also composed patriotic songs, collected under the title Die Lieder vom eisernen Kreuz. Of his literary essays, Rosegger und sein Glaube and Was ist uns Schiller? deserve mention. His activity in the field of art criticism was also noteworthy, especially with regard to the Beuron school of painting. For purposes of study he went to Italy several times, where, during his stay at Montecassino, he helped Fr. Desiderio Lenz for some time to revise the manuscripts for the edition of the Canon.
The P. brothers, after three years spent on the return journey, were in Venice in 1269, where they remained for two years, awaiting the election of a new pope after the death of Clement IV. They set out again for Asia in 1271, taking Marco with them, who was then 17 years old. To M. P. we owe the account of the subsequent, much longer journey, of his stay at Qubilai’s court in China, and of the return journey; it is contained in the celebrated book usually called Milione. From it we also learn the little that is known—and that has been summarized above—of Niccolò and Matteo’s earlier journey. In his book Marco combines descriptions of countries known de situ with information about other countries not visited by him, obtained from informants; the distinction is not always easy to make, and consequently the reconstruction of the itinerary presents certain uncertainties. From Lajazzo, on the Levantine Sea, the travellers crossed part of Armenia as far as Mossul, and from there proceeded to Hormuz; then, abandoning the idea of embarking, they crossed the whole of Persia as far as Balj on the Amù, went around the Pamirs to the north, descended into present-day Chinese Turkestan and, after overcoming the Gobi at the cost of the most severe hardships, reached Chemenfu and then the new capital Khanbaliq near Peking (1275). It seems that M. P. soon won the sympathy of the Great Khan and was entrusted with various missions of confidence throughout the vast Empire (Katay and Mangi, names used by P. to designate respectively northern and southern China), but what office he actually held and which regions he travelled through are not entirely certain. He certainly became acquainted, through repeated visits, with all the central provinces, the richest and most full of life; to the south he advanced as far as Yun-nan, where he gathered information about Tibet, Burma, etc.; to the north he proceeded, perhaps with his uncle, as far as Kanciau, not far from the frontiers of Mongolia. A mission to Ciampa, present-day Cochinchina, cannot be ruled out. M. P. received indirect information about other more distant countries, including Cipango (Japan). His stay in China lasted a full 17 years. The P. brothers’ return took place by sea, since they had joined a mission carrying to the Khan of Persia his future bride, chosen from among the girls of his tribe. They embarked at the beginning of 1292 and, following the coast of southern China and Indochina, stopped at Sumatra, visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and reached Ceylon and India, where they made frequent stops; then, by that time guided by Arab pilots, they arrived at Hormuz toward the end of 1293. From there, travelling by land, the P. brothers emerged at Trebizond and finally returned to Venice during the year 1295. The romantic details concerning the travellers’ reappearance in Venice among their relatives are to be regarded as fictitious; the tradition that they brought back fabulous riches from their long journey must likewise be rejected. They had probably gathered only enough to live comfortably, so that from their old residence they moved into a palace later designated by the name «Cà Million». For the rest, very little is known about the remaining period of M. P.’s life, which lasted for approximately another 30 years, since he died on 9 January 1324. The most notable episode is his imprisonment in Genoa in 1298–99; according to the most commonly accepted tradition, he was captured, aboard a galley commanded by him, at the battle of Curzola. This period was nevertheless of exceptional importance, because in prison he dictated an account of his journeys to a fellow prisoner, Rusticiano or Rustichello da Pisa, who wrote it down in French. The French text is entitled Les merveilles du monde; much more widespread are a version in Italian vernacular and one in the Venetian dialect, both bearing the title Milione. This title, however, has nothing to do with the contents, but is an appellation of its author, called in certain documents Marcus Paulus Milioni, indeed a family appellation also borne by his father Niccolò (probably an apheresis of Emilione). A Latin version, produced around 1310 by a friar, Francesco Pipino, at the behest of the Dominicans of Bologna for the use of missionaries, also achieved enormous circulation, and thus while M. P. was still alive.
M. P.’s book is a precious and inexhaustible source of information of every kind about the countries and peoples of the Levant, South Asia, and the Far East. Many regions became known to Europeans for the first time through his efforts; in some provinces of China no other European entered after him until the nineteenth century. Among the countries of which he speaks, though not from direct knowledge, are the Christian state of Abyssinia (Abesce) and Somalia. M. P. also provides information of great interest concerning the beliefs, religious customs, and rites of the Asian peoples. The fact remains that his contemporaries considered him, at least in certain respects, a teller of tall tales or little better; but from the sixteenth century onward his reputation was restored: the information provided in that and the following century by the Jesuit missionaries in China confirmed the truthfulness of his accounts. Modern criticism has since fully recognized the value of the book, whose text nevertheless underwent, through translations, transcriptions, and various manipulations, alterations so complex that the restoration of a text as close as possible to the original remains a difficult and not yet completely solved problem. The influence of M. P.’s book among merchants, businessmen, and missionaries who followed in his footsteps along the routes of Asian East was enormous; China was opened by him to Catholic missionaries: Marco had barely returned twenty years earlier when Oderico da Pordenone set out for the Far East. It is also known that the reading of M. P.’s book, in the Latin version by Fra Pipino, exerted perhaps a decisive influence on the preparation of Columbus’s project to reach East Asia by the transoceanic route.