Marco Polo's Devisement du monde (Description of the World) in the Library of King Charles V of France

Abstract

This essay examines Marco Polo's Description of the World as a central node in the library of King Charles V of France (r. 1364–1380). It first discusses the generations-long attachment that the Valois exhibited for the Description, which in effect became a dynastic heirloom. It then surveys the origins of Charles V's book collection, which expanded on an existing library that already contained several works that discussed the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Far East. As we know from the inventories of 1380, Charles V owned five copies of the Description, which was emblematic of the king's intellectual project. In its geographical reach and breadth of content, the Description mirrors the rest of the library. Many of the genres and works that influenced Marco Polo and Rustichello da Pisa–epics, romances, chronicles–were housed in Charles's library. The library also contained two of the most important works of European geography–The Book of John Mandeville and the Catalan Atlas–both of which were inspired by and draw on the Description. As the definitive European account on the Mongols, the Description is also related to the roughly forty volumes in Charles's library that contained mentions of the "Tartars." A third, if not much more, of the works in the library either came from Asia (e.g. astrological treatises), or described Asian and African peoples and places. The Description thus invites us to understand Charles V's library as not only a European but rather a global collection.