Indeed down to nearly 1385, boys in the English grammar-schools were taught to construe their Latin lessons into French.[10] St. Francis of Assisi is said by some of his biographers to have had his original name changed to Francesco because of his early mastery of that language as a qualification for commerce.  French had been the prevalent tongue of the Crusaders, and was that of the numerous Frank Courts which they established in the East, including Jerusalem and the states of the Syrian coast, Cyprus, Constantinople during the reign of the Courtenays, and the principalities of the Morea.  The Catalan soldier and chronicler Ramon de Muntaner tells us that it was commonly said of the Morean chivalry that they spoke as good French as at Paris.[11] Quasi-French at least was still spoken half a century later by the numerous Christians settled at Aleppo, as John Marignolli testifies;[12] and if we may trust Sir John Maundevile the Soldan of Egypt himself and four of his chief Lords “spak Frensche righte wel!"[13] Ghazan Kaan, the accomplished Mongol Sovereign of Persia, to whom our Traveller conveyed a bride from Cambaluc, is said by the historian Rashiduddin to have known something of the Frank tongue, probably French.[14] Nay, if we may trust the author of the Romance of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, French was in his day the language of still higher spheres![15]

Nor was Polo’s case an exceptional one even among writers on the East who were not Frenchmen.  Maundevile himself tells us that he put his book first “out of Latyn into Frensche,” and then out of French into English.[16] The History of the East which the Armenian Prince and Monk Hayton dictated to Nicolas Faulcon at Poictiers in 1307 was taken down in French.  There are many other instances of the employment of French by foreign, and especially by Italian authors of that age.  The Latin chronicle of the Benedictine Amato of Monte Cassino was translated into French early in the 13th century by another monk of the same abbey, at the particular desire of the Count of Militree (or Malta), “Pour ce qu’il set lire et entendre fransoize et s’en delitte."[17] Martino da Canale, a countryman and contemporary of Polo’s, during the absence of the latter in the East wrote a Chronicle of Venice in the same language, as a reason for which he alleges its general popularity.[18] The like does the most notable example of all, Brunetto Latini, Dante’s master, who wrote in French his encyclopaedic and once highly popular work Li Tresor.[19] Other examples might be given, but in fact such illustration is superfluous when we consider that Rusticiano himself was a compiler of French Romances.