Come and See: Remembering Marco Polo: The Challenge of Dialogue in A Broken World

This double issue of the Macau Ricci Institute Journal 14 and 15 attempts to capture a few glimpses of an extremely rich and demanding reflection on significant changes in the Middle Kingdom of the Yuan Dynasty which relate to the iconic name of Marco Polo whose death some 700 years ago was widely remembered in different parts of the world especially in China and in Italy. A new battle cry provoked many people and cultures to step into the footsteps of the great Venetian traveler namely: you need to come and see it to believe it. Far away countries and cultures no longer seemed just exotic and basically out of reach. A new threshold was crossed: not only missionaries and businesspeople, to some degree anyone with sufficient resources could embark to discover firsthand what cultures and people looked like. In the first part of this issue the reader is challenged to an historical-ethical inquiry into the significance of Marco Polo.