Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades

PREFACE

When viewed historically, geographical concepts are seen to have come from an immense variety of sources. They have sprung partly from activities that cause men to travel over the surface of the earth: war, commerce, pilgrimage, diplomacy, pleasure. They have also sprung from the accumulated learning and lore of preceding ages and to no small extent from unfettered flights of the imagination. The history of geography, therefore, leads its students into many fields, affording them a key by means of which they may gain a sounder understanding of the extensive ranges of human activity and of the evolution of important phases of intellectual life.

This book is an attempt to illustrate and trace the origins of the most characteristic geographical ideas current in Western Europe at the height of the Middle Ages. Historians of geography have tended to neglect this period partly because of the dramatic appeal of the great Age of Discovery which was immediately to follow. It should be remembered, however, that, small as the known world was during the Middle Ages and naïve as may have been men’s conceptions of it, medieval learning was none the less the central element in the scholarly background of the Age of Discovery. The Renaissance brought no sudden and complete emancipation from old modes of thought. While medieval science persisted and some of its errors may have restricted subsequent progress, on the whole the positive achievements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have been impossible had it not been for the enlightenment transferred from the centuries that went before.

C. R. Beazley in the second volume of his great work, The Dawn of Modern Geography (1901), adequately treats of the travels and explorations of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, but to the more theoretical aspects of geographical knowledge in this age he gives but meager space. Karl Kretschmer in a monograph, Die physische Erdkunde im christlichen Mittelalter (1889), xxdeals systematically with the physical geography of the entire Middle Ages but necessarily slights or wholly neglects many of the more interesting writings of the century and a half to which the present book is devoted. Other, lesser studies of the geographical conceptions of this period have to do exclusively with points of detail. The present writer ventures to hope, therefore, that there is place for a book in which the geographical lore of the time of the Crusades is discussed with greater fullness and at the same time with an orientation differing in many particulars from that of any work hitherto devoted to the subject.

Except as regards a few minor points (especially in Chapter X) he makes no claim to having based his work upon hitherto unpublished manuscript sources. The main part of the study, however (that dealing with the time of the Crusades, Chapters IV-XIII), is founded essentially upon printed editions of the primary sources for the history of civilization in the period. The first three chapters, on the other hand, relating as they do to the background of medieval geography and covering an enormous field, of necessity have to a large degree been written with the aid of the secondary works of modern scholars.

The volume is an enlargement of a thesis submitted in 1922 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in history at Harvard University. Some of the research was pursued in Europe in 1919–1920, during which academic year the writer held the Woodbury Lowery Fellowship from Harvard. Subsequently the American Geographical Society has generously permitted him, while acting as Librarian of the Society, to devote much time to the revision of the manuscript.

The writer owes a special debt of gratitude to Professor C. H. Haskins, largely as a result of whose advice the particular period dealt with was selected. Helpful suggestions and the occasional receipt from Professor Haskins of a photograph or transcript of a manuscript bearing upon an apposite topic have been a constant stimulus. Useful suggestions have also been made by Professor R. P. Blake of Harvard and by Monsieur Charles de La Roncière of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. xxiDr. Charles Singer of the University of London courteously permitted the use of Plate VIII from his Scientific Views and Visions of St. Hildegard (1917) as a basis for Figure 5 of the present volume. The writer is indebted to Mr. W. L. G. Joerg, the editor, from whose editorial skill, experience, and tireless care the book has greatly profited. He also wishes to thank Mr. George W. Robinson, Secretary of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Miss Genevieve R. Fallon, formerly of Radcliffe College, and Mr. Arthur A. Brooks and members of the library staff of the American Geographical Society for their painstaking aid with manuscript and proof.

New York, October 7, 1924.

INTRODUCTION — The Time of the Crusades — Scope of the Term “Geographical Lore” — Origins of the Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades — Organization of the Present Work

The time of the Crusades, like all great constructive epochs in the history of civilization, was an age of contrasts. A succession of crises marked the progress of conflict between the ideals of Papacy and of Empire. The feudalism of an earlier day was giving place in Western Europe to centralized monarchy, in Italy to the growth of city states. Though faith swayed the masses of men to the undertaking of immense coöperative enterprises—cathedral building and crusades—the time, none the less, was one of questioning and doubt: faith sometimes gave place to heresy hunting. Keener intellects were not afraid to probe deep at the very foundations of established theological doctrine. A profound and widespread enthusiasm for scholarship expressed itself in many forms. The writings of older authorities were ransacked for the wisdom which they contained, and from them erudite and forbidding tomes were compiled. But wandering students and poets were abroad who hated the musty learning of the monastic cell and frankly rejoiced in the beauty of the world around them. For some time historians have been in the habit of speaking of a “twelfth-century renaissance.” This expression is not wholly apt if used in a narrow sense to imply merely a rebirth of interest in the Greek and Latin classics. If taken to mean a re-stirring of the vital forces of civilization, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were an age of renaissance indeed.

The purpose of this book is to illustrate a limited aspect of the intellectual activity of the time of the Crusades, but an aspect that is sufficiently broad to reveal to us something of the contrasting forces of this age.

By “geographical lore” we mean what was known, believed, and felt about the origins, present condition, and distribution 2of the geographical elements of the earth. This covers a wider field than most definitions of geography. It comprises theories of the creation of the earth, of its size, shape, and movements, and of its relations to the heavenly bodies; of the zones of its atmosphere and the varied physiographic features of air, water, and land; finally, it comprises theories of the regions of the earth’s surface. Because many of these theories were false they are no less deserving of attention. The errors of an age are as characteristic as the accurate knowledge which it possesses—and often more so. Moreover, in addition to formulated beliefs, whether true or false, our definition of geographical lore covers man’s spiritual and esthetic attitude toward the various geographical facts, as revealed—often unconsciously—in descriptions of regions or of landscapes.

The historian of geology or the theologian may complain that we trespass on their domains in discussing theories of the Creation in a book devoted to the history of geography. Yet this is justifiable if we hold with most modern geographers that some explanation of the immediate causes of existing terrestrial conditions is an essential part of geography. These causes, it was the opinion of medieval thinkers, were to be sought for in the processes of the Creation. No man had the vaguest conception of the countless eons that have elapsed during which air, sea, and land have been in evolution. The good Christian thought that the world was made by God in the course of the six days of Genesis and that it then assumed practically the identical geographical appearance it has preserved ever since. In the Middle Ages geology, geography, and theology were inextricably interwoven.

Then again, the geographical lore of the Middle Ages involves a wider range of subjects in space, as well as in time, than is now included in geography. If medieval man had no knowledge of the age of the earth, he also had but the feeblest understanding of the immensity of the universe. To him, earth, stellar bodies, and celestial spheres were all part of a unified system of which the earth formed the core and most important member. Cosmology, astronomy, astrology, theology all dealt with this unified, 3geocentric, cosmic system; the interrelations between them were immediate and intimate. We cannot avoid some discussion of the matters in which these allied sciences bore directly on geography.

Whence came the geographical lore of the time of the Crusades?

Some of it came from books of earlier ages, some of it from contemporary observation. A sharp distinction may be made between the geography of the scholar and churchman, drawn largely from antiquity, and the geography of the merchant, soldier, and pilgrim, who learned of the world by travel and exploration. It was exceptional when the philosopher or theologian incorporated in his book the reports of recent travels. Indeed, we are almost startled to come across a bit of “up-to-date” geography in the philosophical or theological treatises. Even the histories and chronicles of contemporary events, though perforce containing more new geography than works of deeper learning, tended to appeal to ancient authorities in explaining the course of rivers or the relation of provinces or mountain chains to each other.

Any consideration of the state of medieval geography inevitably presupposes some acquaintance with the earlier accumulation of geographical lore from which it borrowed.

This was derived for the most part from two fountainheads of original observation and thought: (1) the writings of Greek historians and philosophers and (2) the Bible. Greek geography was the main source whence Latin writers of the Roman Empire and Moslems of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries of our era found their inspiration and facts. The Bible, as interpreted in the exegetical works of the Church Fathers, stimulated thought on geographical problems. The scholar of our period had at his disposal many Latin writings, both classical and patristic, and a somewhat more limited number of Arabic books and translations from the Arabic.

The aim of the first three chapters of our study is to give an estimate in broad outline of the contributions of classical, patristic, and Oriental geography to the medieval West. The purpose is to show the kind of geographical ideas which a reader of the twelfth or thirteenth century might have gathered from older works in the libraries and to reveal something of the evolution of these ideas. No attempt is made to discuss works not well known in the Occident. The writings of famous Greek geographers like Herodotus, Pausanias, Strabo, Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy receive only scant attention, and their contents are noted only in so far as they became familiar to Western Christendom through Latin media. Similarly the Greek Fathers of the Church and most of the more important Moslem geographers are overlooked because they exerted almost no influence on Western thought. Nor within the period itself that forms the subject of our investigation is much space given to writers like the Moslem Edrisi or the Greek Michael Psellos, whose researches did not contribute materially to the formation of Western science.

After a fourth chapter, on the literary and cartographic sources which date from the time of the Crusades and upon which our estimate of the geographical lore of this age is based, and a fifth, on the place of geography in the medieval scheme of learning, there follows the main part of this book. The attempt is here made to illustrate from representative sources geographical lore of all kinds, whether original or borrowed, to emphasize evidences of originality where they are apparent, and to trace a few significant borrowed theories to their origins. Though the period under consideration lasted a century and a half, there was not much change during this time in the quantity of geographical information available or in the quality of geographical thinking. Hence it will be more convenient and enlightening to adopt a topical and regional arrangement for the main portion of our treatment than to try to arrange the material chronologically.

5By no means all the geographical knowledge and thought of the Crusading age could be stated and discussed in a volume of even many times the size of this. It is the writer’s hope that the materials selected are sufficiently diverse to give a rounded and just, though it be necessarily far from complete, understanding of the geographical lore of a significant period in the history of science and of civilization.

PART I ORIGINS, SOURCES, AND PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL LORE OF THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES — CHAPTER I THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD — SOURCES — THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE — SHAPE, MOVEMENTS, AND SIZE OF THE EARTH — THE DISTRIBUTION OF HABITABLE REGIONS; ZONES; THE DISTRIBUTION OF LAND AND WATER — PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY — MATHEMATICAL GEOGRAPHY AND CARTOGRAPHY — THE EXPANSION OF REGIONAL KNOWLEDGE — CHAPTER II THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D. — INTRODUCTION — SOURCES — THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE — SHAPE AND SIZE OF THE EARTH — ZONES AND THE ANTIPODES — PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY — THE MEDIEVAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY BEFORE 1100 A. D. — MATHEMATICAL GEOGRAPHY AND CARTOGRAPHY — REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY — CHAPTER III THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MOSLEMS — SOURCES — ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY; THEORIES OF THE TIDES — ARABIC EXPLORATION AND TRAVEL — CHAPTER IV THE SOURCES FOR THE PERIOD 1100–1250 A. D. — INTRODUCTION — THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS — TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ARABIC; WORKS WRITTEN UNDER ARABIC INFLUENCE; ARISTOTELIANISM AND ITS OPPONENTS — ENCYCLOPEDIC WORKS — HISTORIES, CHRONICLES, SAGAS, EPIC POEMS — LEGENDS — PILGRIM NARRATIVES; MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS OF TRAVEL — TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS — MAPS — CHAPTER V THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE MEDIEVAL CLASSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE — Geography Included Under Geometry — Geography Included Under Astrology — Geography and the Aristotelian Division of Learning

The Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle

The earliest writers who dealt with geographical matters in a more or less scientific spirit were the Greeks of Ionia and the Pythagorean philosophers of Magna Graecia. Though their theories exerted no direct influence on the formation of medieval geography, they should not be entirely overlooked. Ionic geography gave many ideas to the later Greeks; Pythagorean thought brought to bear a strong influence on the Platonic cosmology, which reached the Middle Ages through the Latin translation of Plato’s Timaeus made by Chalcidius early in the fifth century after Christ, and through the Platonists Martianus Capella and Macrobius. Until the middle of the twelfth century Plato, of all philosophers, held the strongest grip on medieval thought; after that time the influence of Aristotle became more potent in the framing of the scholastic conception of the universe. We must regard Plato and, even more, Aristotle as the indirect sources of most of the cosmological, physiographic, and meteorological knowledge which, elaborated by later writers of antiquity and by the Moslems, reached the Middle Ages at second hand. Among the many writings of Aristotle those which contain the most material of interest to the geographer are the De caelo (Περὶ οὐρανοῦ) and the Meteorology. The former, in four books, treats of the properties of the heavenly bodies, of the elements, and of the earth. Translations of the De caelo in the Middle Ages often went under the title De caelo et mundo.^[1][2] The Meteorology, besides a detailed discussion of the phenomena of the atmosphere, includes many speculations on physical geography. Theories of cosmology also found expression in the Physics and De generatione et corruptione.

10The scientific genius of the Alexandrian Greeks of the Hellenistic period showed itself in the work of men like Eratosthenes and Hipparchus. By them the mathematical and astronomical aspects of geography were developed with accuracy; but unfortunately, owing to the almost universal ignorance of Greek in the West, the products of their genius had little part in the molding of medieval theories.

Roman Influence on Geography

The Roman conquests tended to discredit scientific investigations and to bring into favor works of a descriptive nature which would appeal to the military chief, the provincial governor, or man of the world—to the practical rather than speculative type of mind. Polybius regarded geography as an important auxiliary science to politics and history. The geographical portions of his history treat of the countries of the known world, their peoples and customs; he is not concerned with the size and shape of the earth nor with the determination of latitudes and longitudes. Strabo, writing at the time of Augustus, represents the culmination of the Polybian method; but his great and comprehensive work, though of first importance in the history of ancient geography, was not read at the time of the Crusades.

Ptolemy

The Greek, or more purely scientific, attitude, however, did not completely succumb. Posidonius^[3] in the first century before Christ reverted to the method of Eratosthenes; and with Marinus of Tyre and Claudius Ptolemy, in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, there came a revival of mathematical geography which almost, if not quite, equaled the high level reached by the Alexandrians^[4]. Ptolemy was the author of two works, both of which were destined profoundly to modify the development of science in later ages. These were the Mathematical Composition (or Almagest, as the Arabs called it), a treatise on astronomy, knowledge of which reached the medieval West through Moslem channels; and the Geography, a work which remained virtually unknown in Europe until the fifteenth century.

Though the most fertile investigations were made by Greeks, Latin writers naturally influenced more directly medieval thought in the West. Of those who dealt with geographic matters in the strictly classical period Pliny the Elder (23–79 A. D.) and Seneca (3 B. C.-65 A. D.) were the most influential. The Historia naturalis of Pliny, an ill-digested compilation of information of all sorts, contained books on geography that were destined to furnish the larger part of the lettered man’s geographical ideas during many centuries.^[5] Pliny’s work was not merely extensively read but was used and plagiarized by other writers of possibly greater popularity. The most significant of these was Solinus,^[6] a compiler of fables in the third century after Christ, whose Collectanea rerum memorabilium consists almost entirely of borrowings from Pliny or from a book from which Pliny drew.^[7] The geographical information in Isidore’s Etymologiae is largely made up of quotations and paraphrases from Solinus. Seneca’s Quaestiones naturales^[8] was also widely read and formed the source of the bulk of the meteorological lore of the Middle Ages.

Two Latin writers of the late Empire also contributed materially to the evolution of geographical knowledge, Martianus Capella (fourth or fifth century) and Macrobius (fifth century). Capella’s encyclopedic De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii is an elaborate commentary on and exposition of the seven arts; the book dealing with geometry gives the author an opportunity of presenting a résumé of geography, more particularly in its mathematical aspects.^[9] That Martianus Capella’s treatise enjoyed an immense popularity in the medieval period is indicated by the quantity of manuscripts extant and by the frequency with which we find it listed in the medieval library catalogues^[10] that have been preserved. The general sketch of the distribution of land and water on the surface of the globe contained in Macrobius’ commentary on the Somnium Scipionis^[11] of Cicero was often quoted at later periods and formed the basis for some of the extremely crude maps of the world used in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.

In the remainder of the present chapter a very general 12review will be given of the more important geographic ideas borrowed by the Western world in these centuries from Aristotle, Pliny, Solinus, Seneca, Martianus Capella, Macrobius, and some others, and an attempt will be made to indicate the relationship between the growth of these ideas and the broader evolution of ancient geography as a whole.

Ancient Cosmogony

Though it is not now regarded as lying strictly within the field of geography, the history of the evolution of theories about the origin of the earth is so closely allied to the history of geography that the two cannot well be dissociated. A marked antagonism inevitably arose between the usual Greek view, which regarded matter as eternal, and the Christian view, which was based on the first chapter of Genesis and conceived of the universe as created at a definite point in time or concurrently with time. The men of the Middle Ages tended to adhere strictly to the Christian opinion, for to have done otherwise would have been heretical. Nevertheless, the ancient theory was well known to Christians and exerted in its various forms no small influence on the development of certain phases of Christian thought.

Celestial Influences

It was a deeply rooted belief of many classical thinkers that the events and conditions on this world and on all the regions below the sphere of the moon’s orbit are regulated by the heavenly bodies. Aristotle and his followers taught that the heavenly bodies themselves are made of an imperishable and incorruptible, almost divine, fifth element, ether, which distinguishes them from the four corruptible elements (fire, air, water, and earth) that constitute the immediate world of our senses.^[12] By virtue of this semi-divine quality, it was argued, the sun, planets, and stars exert an all-powerful control over the earth around which they revolve—an absolutely determining control over all events both great and small.^[13] From this fatalistic belief 13sprang the science of astrology, a science which throughout antiquity was held in equal esteem with astronomy.

The study of the movements of the celestial bodies revealed the fact that at some time in the distant future, sun, planets, and stars will bear exactly the same relative position one to another that they do at the present moment. Consequently, it was inferred that the influence exerted by them on the sublunar regions will at that time be exactly the same as it now is, and all the phenomena now apparent on the earth’s surface will be exactly repeated. They will be repeated not only once but an infinite number of times at periodic intervals in the future; similarly they have been repeated throughout infinite cycles in the past.^[14]

Cosmic Cycles: The Great Years

This idea of cosmic cycles, or Great Years, appears to have originated in the Orient, possibly with the Chaldeans.^[15] It was firmly established among the Ionian Greeks^[16] and Pythagoreans,^[17] from whom Plato adopted it. Many and various opinions prevailed about the violence and character of the changes produced by the celestial cycles. The Chaldeans had thought that whenever all the planets come into conjunction on one straight line in the sign of the zodiac Cancer, the entire universe is destroyed by fire but destroyed only to be born again; similarly the world is destroyed by water when the same phenomenon occurs in Capricorn.^[18] The theory of a complete and universal birth and rebirth (palingenesis) was held by some of the Greek philosophers.^[19] Plato and Aristotle, however, seem to have restricted the destructive effects of the celestial influence to the sublunar sphere and maintained that the realms above the moon were eternal.^[20] On the whole, belief in periodically recurrent destructions of the earth by water was more widespread and was given greater definition than belief in corresponding destructions by fire.^[21] The main reason for this is probably to be looked for in the dissemination among nearly all peoples of legends of a great flood, but it also in no small measure may be attributed to rudimentary geological observations (notably 14of the presence of shells on high ground) which showed that portions of the earth’s surface had at one time lain beneath the waters.^[22]

Geographic Application of the Theory of the Great Years

The theory of the Great Years was invoked to explain changes in geographic and climatic conditions on the earth’s surface.^[23] When the various planets and stars bear a certain relation to one another, a period of dryness and heat, or a Great Summer, is experienced; conversely, when other stellar relationships prevail, there is a period of cold and wetness, or a Great Winter. Even land and sea gradually change places under stellar control. Certain parts of the land, Aristotle observed, had once been covered by the sea, and what is now sea had once been land: like plants and animals, land and sea grow to maturity and old age. If the causes adduced for these changes were not so utterly different from those that are now accepted, we might almost be tempted to think that Aristotle had some conception of climatic cycles and cycles of erosion.

After Plato and Aristotle, as before them, the doctrine of the Great Years, though by no means universal, was very popular in antiquity.^[24] The Stoics adopted it in its more extreme form involving successive burnings and liquefactions of the universe.^[25] It entered into Neoplatonism and was ultimately taken over by the Jews. It seems to have penetrated to India, where the Greek elaboration of the theory gave precision to ideas that were probably already in existence there. The Indian belief in the recurrent reincarnations of Brahma was brought into connection with Hellenic calculations of the duration of the Great Years.^[26] From the Hindus and from the Greeks the conception was transferred to the Arabs and by them to the knowledge of the Latin West.

Duration of the Great Years

Numerous endeavors were made in antiquity to calculate the length of a Great Year.^[27] The figure that was adopted by the 15Arabs and passed on to the Christian world originated in Hipparchus’ discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, or apparent gradual revolution of the fixed stars around the pole of the ecliptic.^[28] Ptolemy calculated that the period of this revolution was 36,000 years,^[29] a figure which became known to the Hindus and Arabs and ultimately to medieval Christendom.^[30] The actual figure is approximately 25,800 years.

Sphericity of the Earth

Nearly all scholars of antiquity after the fifth century before Christ thought that the earth was a globe.^[31] The earlier opinion of a disk-shaped earth resting upon the waters, which appears to have been held by Anaximander (although some students have thought that he, too, believed in a spherical earth ^[32]), was discarded by the Pythagoreans and Plato, and after their time no serious thinkers questioned the theory of sphericity. The Pythagoreans based their opinion on speculative and philosophical grounds rather than on physical and experimental proofs; they thought that since the sphere is the most perfect mathematical form, the earth must therefore be a sphere. The whole tendency of Aristotle’s thought, less speculative and less hypothetical than Plato’s,^[33] led him to look for proofs of sphericity,^[34] and these he enunciated with great emphasis. Cleomedes,^[35] Pliny,^[36] Ptolemy,^[37] Martianus Capella,^[38] and other ancient writers likewise adduced more or less convincing proofs, which were well known and often cited in the medieval period.

Immobility of the Earth

Though the learned men of the ancient world were almost universally agreed that the earth is a globe, they were not unanimous in the belief that it stands immovable in the center of the universe; yet the various theories which diverged from this orthodox view had no place in the development of medieval cosmology until long after our period.^[39] Certain among the Pythagoreans maintained that there is a fire in the heart of the earth.^[40] Plato 16said that the center of the earth, which stands immobile^[41] in the center of the universe, is the seat, not of a fire, but of the World Soul.^[42] Through its own internal movement the World Soul causes the movement of the universe as a whole. Belief in the World Soul of Plato was extraordinarily tenacious, and it emerges in the writings of more than one Neoplatonist of the Middle Ages. Aristotle, however, though he likewise held fast to the doctrine of the immobility of the earth in the center of the universe, differed both from the Pythagoreans and from Plato in refusing to believe that the center of the universe could be the seat of an incorruptible being of the same substance as the celestial bodies, be it fire or World Soul. Aristotle,^[43] Pliny,^[44] and Ptolemy^[45] also brought forward proofs of varying validity in favor of the immobility of the earth.

Circumference of the Earth

Several figures were given by ancient authors for the circumference of the earth. Aristotle stated it to be 400,000 stades;^[46] Eratosthenes determined it to be 252,000 stades according to the testimony of many writers, including Pliny,^[47] Vitruvius,^[48] Martianus Capella,^[49] and Macrobius,^[50] although Cleomedes, who gives the most circumstantial account of Eratosthenes’ measurement, had said that the latter’s figure was 250,000.^[51] It is probable that Eratosthenes himself arbitrarily added 2000 stades to his result in order to obtain a figure more easily divisible.^[52] Cleomedes quotes Posidonius as giving 240,000 stades,^[53] and Strabo says that the latter gave 180,000 stades.^[54] The last number was that adopted by Marinus of Tyre and by Ptolemy.

Though we have several distinct figures cited by ancient writers, these assuredly do not indicate that as many distinct processes of measurement were carried out. The circumference given by Aristotle was a mere estimate; Eratosthenes’ result was the only one based on accurate measurements and calculations;^[55] the two figures given by Posidonius may well have been derived from Eratosthenes, the larger arising from a mistaken interpretation or intentional alteration of the latter’s figure, and the smaller from the use of a longer stade.^[56]

17At all events, so far as we know, only one method was employed by the Greeks for determining the size of the earth. This consisted of finding on the same day of the year the meridian altitudes of the sun at two places supposed to be on the same meridian of longitude, the distance between which was known through itineraries. The angle between the two meridian altitudes was then assumed to bear the same relation to the circumference of the heavens as the distance between the two points of observation bore to the circumference of the earth. Cleomedes^[57] and Martianus Capella^[58] described how Eratosthenes carried out such observations in Egypt.

The figure determined by Eratosthenes is surprisingly accurate. Whether the stade used by him was 157.50^[59] or 168^[60] meters, as different modern scholars contend, the circumference according to his estimate would be 39,375 or 42,336 kilometers. In either case the error is seen to be very slight, the true circumference of the earth being about 40,000 kilometers.

We see, then, that the writers of antiquity whose opinions were destined to mold the thought of the medieval period believed that the earth is a sphere, immovably fixed in the center of the universe. We must now examine their theories regarding the distribution of phenomena on the surface of the globe and the interaction of these phenomena. Of prime importance were their views concerning the distribution of habitable areas of land, but these were so closely bound up with the theory of climatic zones that it is absolutely necessary to understand what this theory was before going further, even though the subject of zones might more properly be included in the study of the atmosphere.

Zones

Parmenides may have been the first to conceive of zones upon the earth’s surface corresponding to the zones into which 18the astronomers had divided the heavens. Eratosthenes is said to have been the first to place the theory of terrestrial zones upon a firmly scientific footing, “by determining exactly upon the sphere the position of the fixed circles which mark the limits of each zone” (Thalamas).^[61] Ancient geographers set the number of terrestrial zones at five, though they differed as to the character of the climates within them. The general opinion—one which was shared by Aristotle—was that the polar caps and the equatorial regions were incapable of sustaining life, the first on account of cold, the second on account of heat. Despite the fact that the notion of the existence of a fiery belt between the tropics was challenged by Polybius and Posidonius, who had heard reports from expeditions in these regions, this notion persisted in the writings of Martianus Capella, Macrobius, and many others and exerted an extremely restrictive effect on the subsequent development of geographical knowledge and enterprise.

The majority of the ancient writers whose works were read in Christendom before 1300 also thought that the oikoumene, or portion of the earth inhabited by men of our kind, is completely surrounded by an ocean. This is a belief common to many early peoples.^[62] In the Greek world we can trace it back to the Homeric and Hesiodic Ocean Stream and to the conceptions of early Ionian philosophers, who had gone so far as to maintain that the earth had been created out of water,^[63] or at least that it was originally submerged beneath the ocean and had been brought forth through the evaporation of the water by sun and stars.^[64] The theory of an encircling ocean was certainly held by Aristotle, Pliny,^[65] Seneca, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella.

Crates’ Theory of Four Land Masses

The two last-named writers set forth an elaboration of an opinion first held by the Pythagoreans and worked out in detail by Crates of Mallos in the second century before Christ, which gained great ascendancy over the minds of map makers and writers of the Middle Ages. They explained that the oikoumene is one of four similar inhabited bodies of land on the surface of 19the globe. These bodies of land are separated from one another by two oceans which encircle the earth, one running east and west in the fiery equatorial regions, and one running north and south at right angles to the equatorial ocean. This idea, which we shall call the “Cratesian” theory after its foremost expositor, did not pass unchallenged either in antiquity or in the Christian period. Involving as it did the doctrine of the antipodes—people dwelling in quarters absolutely inaccessible to men of our race, eternally cut off from our oikoumene by the fires of the equator and the terrors of the meridional ocean—the Cratesian theory provoked the indignation of the Fathers of the Church as containing the seeds of heresy.^[66]

Extent of the “Oikoumene”

Aristotle, although he had derived from the Pythagoreans the theory of an uninhabitable torrid belt,^[67] believed in a greater southward extension of our oikoumene than would be possible in accordance with the Cratesian theory. He harbored no idea of the existence of another oikoumene in the same latitude as ours. He says very clearly in the De caelo^[68] that there is no great distance between India and Spain and hinted at the same opinion in the Meteorology.^[69] Seneca^[70] held similar views.

The opposite theory—which has been called the continental as opposed to the oceanic hypothesis^[71]—that Africa and Asia extended unknown distances south and east and that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, like the Caspian Sea, were enclosed basins—also had its adherents, among them Herodotus, Hipparchus, and, most significant of all, Ptolemy. But Ptolemy’s Geography, though its content was reflected in Arabic notions of the earth’s surface, had almost no readers in the Christian West until the fifteenth century, and the works of Herodotus and Hipparchus were unknown.

Aristotle, Seneca, and Pliny

Among the writers of antiquity who dealt with physical geography only three can be said to have influenced twelfth- and 20early thirteenth-century thought to any marked degree. These were, first and foremost, Aristotle, the substance of whose De caelo and Meteorology had reached the West before the year 1187 through the borrowings and plagiarisms of later scholars and after that time could be read in translations from the Greek and Arabic. In the second place, Seneca’s Quaestiones naturales was popular before the direct influence of the De caelo and Meteorology began to be felt. In the third place, as we have seen, the Elder Pliny’s Historia naturalis was not only widely read in the original, but also much that it contained was familiar through the intermediary channels of Solinus, Isidore, Martianus Capella, and others. Aristotle, however, was the fundamental authority, for a large portion of the material in the books of the two Latin authors came from his treatises.

The Four Elements

Most ancient authorities believed that the universe is composed of four elements, fire, air, water, and earth, arranged in concentric spheres. Theoretically, according to this view, the sphere of water should entirely enclose the earth. Practical observation shows that it covers the lower levels of the earth’s surface only. How to reconcile the theoretical conception with observed facts was a problem which, as we shall see, greatly puzzled geographers and physicists during the later Middle Ages.^[72]

According to Aristotle the four elements, under the control of the heavenly bodies and through their interaction upon each other, produce all the physical phenomena of the atmosphere, sea, and earth.^[73] Working from this axiom, he, and all the ancient writers who dealt with the subject, attempted to explain winds, tides, earthquakes, and other occurrences of nature; but there was little agreement among them as to the manner in which these interactions were manifested. Though there were many theories, the actual matters under discussion were not very numerous. Only the most striking and unusual happenings—such as tides, earthquakes, and floods—attracted attention, and we find almost no trace of a minute and careful observation or even of a superficial understanding of those imperceptibly 21slow natural forces which modern geology recognizes as having fashioned mountains, rivers, and seas.

A logical division of the subject matter of physical geography is into three studies: that of the atmosphere, that of the waters, and that of the earth. In each of these there is room for a great deal of hairsplitting about what belongs to geography and what to geology, geophysics, or meteorology. Physical geography merges into the other natural sciences as human geography merges into history, politics, economics, or ethnology. Even at the present day, when the often futile attempt is being made to delimit the domains of the various sciences ever more definitely, it is impossible to distinguish where one begins and another ends, and it would be foolish to set up hard and fast definitions in dealing with the lore of the ancient and medieval worlds, when natural science was as yet inchoate.

Meteorology

The ancients were more interested in meteorology^[74] than they were in oceanography and physiography (if such terms can be used for their naïve attempts at explaining the features of ocean and land), perhaps because the phenomena of the air make a deeper impression on men than the phenomena of the sea and earth—tides, earthquakes, and volcanoes excepted. Thunder and lightning, comets, rainbows, balls of fire were looked upon as portents, and complex theories were created to explain them and what they were supposed to foretell. But all this type of meteorological lore, however interesting in itself, is, strictly speaking, not geography. On the other hand, there are certain distinctly geographical aspects of the study of the atmosphere as pursued by the Greeks and Romans that deserve our attention.

The men of antiquity conceived of the interaction of atmosphere and earth in two ways: effects produced by the land upon the atmosphere, and effects produced by the winds upon the land. In connection with the first, Seneca makes a remark which, when taken from its context, would not be out of place in a modern manual of meteorology. He conceived the lower portion of the atmosphere to be extremely variable and inconstant 22as a result of the proximity of the earth. “The earth is a more important cause than all others ... for the air’s changefulness and inconstancy. The varying positions of the land, facing here this way and there another way, are of great moment in determining the temperature of the air.”^[75] Nothing is truer than this, but the reasons that Seneca gives for the influence of the atmosphere upon the land are not satisfactory, being based to a large extent on the supposition that winds are produced by vapors. Indeed, by the theory of vapors and exhalations many ancient and medieval thinkers attempted to explain nearly all the phenomena of the atmosphere and heavens as well. Aristotle had pointed out that a dry and smokelike exhalation is caused by the sun to rise from the earth’s surface through the air and even to penetrate the zone of fire.^[76] While near the earth this exhalation takes the form of wind; when ignited at higher levels it becomes comets and shooting stars. Besides this, Aristotle maintained that a damp and watery vapor is also drawn into the atmosphere by the sun’s heat and when cooled turns into cloud or falls in the form of rain and snow.^[77] These ideas of Aristotle became known to the Western world of the Middle Ages with translations of the De caelo and Meteorology and found their expression in the thirteenth-century writings of Albertus Magnus.^[78] Seneca, on the other hand, explained that the winds were air in motion and that they might be produced by many and various causes.^[79]

Winds

All three of the writers whom we are specially considering,^[80] Aristotle, Seneca, and Pliny, had observed that there is a variety of local winds—valley, river, sea, and marsh breezes—taking their origin from the exhalations and vapors arising from these natural features. But even though their explanations of the causes for these winds are now regarded as archaic, the observations they made of their occurrence were not inaccurate.

As to the effects of the winds on the earth, we encounter a theory that sounds most extraordinary in the light of modern science but which corresponds logically to the Aristotelian 23hypothesis of the elements and to the general ideas current in classical times regarding the structure of the earth. This theory, that the winds are the cause of earthquakes, can better be understood after we have examined the ancient opinions about the physical geography of the water and of the earth.

Another persistent belief, held alike by poets, physicists, and geographers, originated in the Homeric mythology of the calm heights of Olympus, dwelling place of the gods. This was to the effect that the winds are limited to the lower part of the atmosphere,^[81] a zone some ten or fifteen stades in thickness.^[82] The highest mountains were thought to reach above into a realm of perpetual tranquillity where clouds and dew and frost were unknown and where the ashes of sacrifice would remain undisturbed for a year’s time.^[83] This idea was transferred to the Middle Ages through the writings of Pomponius Mela, Solinus, and others.

Climatology

As to the climates, it has already been shown that many writers of antiquity divided the earth’s surface into zones: fiery, temperate, and frozen. Aristotle, Seneca, and Pliny do not seem to have had that more exact understanding of the distribution of climates which recognizes that two countries in the same latitude may, nevertheless, have different climatic conditions and products.^[84] To them, all places on the same parallel were virtually the same from the climatic point of view. In this connection it must be pointed out that the parallel strips, or climata, into which Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Pliny, and Martianus Capella divided the oikoumene were not climatic divisions in our modern sense—implying the prevalence of well-defined conditions of temperature and weather—but, rather, artificial astronomical divisions the boundaries of which were determined by arbitrary means.^[85] Nevertheless, true climatic differences were well understood; Seneca describes vividly in more than one place in the Quaestiones naturales the intense heat and dryness of southern regions^[86] and the cold of the far North; Seneca and Pliny had acquired more detailed knowledge than Aristotle of the northern ice and snows.^[87] Pliny made some interesting, if unsound, 24observations connecting the dark complexions of the Ethiopians with the scorching effects of the sun and foreshadowed a modern theory by asserting that the inhabitants of northern Europe are blonde (and savage) because of the coldness and inclemency of the climate in which they dwell.^[88] A brief but striking passage from the Octavius of Marcus Minutius Felix explains as follows the warming effect of the western ocean upon the climate of Britain: “God is mindful of our welfare not only universally but locally. Britain is deficient in sunshine, but this deficiency is made good by the warmth of the sea that flows around it.”^[89]

The Greeks and Romans certainly had no satisfactory understanding of the general circulation of the atmosphere. Only with the maritime voyages since the fifteenth century have we come to know the distribution of belts of prevailing winds and calms. Aristotle said that the etesian, or north, winds blow from the cold countries full of water and snow under the Great Bear; and that the south wind originates at, but not south of, the Tropic of Cancer;^[90] this is the nearest he came to giving a theory of atmospheric circulation. Megasthenes had heard of the monsoons of the Indian Ocean; Pliny described the use made of them by sailors in going out to India,^[91] but he made no attempt to explain the general areas of westerlies or trades. On the other hand, Aristotle,^[92] Seneca,^[93] and Pliny^[94] all recognized and discussed at considerable length the influences of wind on weather; for example, the fact that the etesians, though they bring clear skies to Italy, deluge Ethiopia and India with rain—a conception which contains a shadow of truth.^[95] Auster, the south wind, was supposed to bring rain to Italy.

The Water Element

Since water was one of the four—or, according to Aristotle, five—elements that were supposed to make up the universe, the ancient authorities looked upon the ocean as necessarily as old as the earth itself. Seneca thought that the Nile and the Ister (Danube) are of equal age with the primordial ocean, because of remarkable characteristics which differentiate them from all other streams.^[96]

We must note what features of the sea interested the Greeks and Romans. These were primarily its saltness, its depth, its currents, and its tides.

The problem of why the sea is salt gave rise to a good deal of theorizing. That the evaporation of the lighter fresh water leaves behind the heavy salt water was well understood, but in the further solution of the problem opinions diverged widely. Aristotle thought that the salt was the result of combustion;^[97] that it was an ashlike substance first carried into the air by the exhalations from the earth and then deposited in the sea by rainfall—particularly by the autumn rains that accompany the south winds blowing from hot, dry districts where the process of combustion is most active. Pliny believed that the salt came partly from dry vapors intermingled with the sea waters and partly from the nature of the earth, which tends to impregnate the sea with salt.^[98]

Aristotle said^[99] that the Pontus (Black Sea) was deeper than the Maeotis (Sea of Azov), the Aegean deeper than the Pontus—except in one place—the Sicilian Sea deeper than the Aegean, and the Sardinian and Tyrrhenian the deepest of all seas. Pliny quotes^[100] a certain Fabianus to the effect that the greatest known depth of the sea is fifteen stades, or about 1200 fathoms—not an excessive figure, for parts of the Mediterranean are in fact even deeper. Pliny,^[101] following Aristotle,^[102] believed that the “Deeps of the Euxine,” opposite the shores of the people of the Coraxi, were unfathomable.^[103] Aristotle had a very false idea that the Atlantic is made up of shallows and mud banks and that it is calm, an idea shared by the Mohammedans and one that may have contributed to the horror of the Western Ocean which lingered in the minds of Mediterranean peoples throughout antiquity and until the close of the Middle Ages.^[104]

The ancient geographers certainly had no clearer understanding of the general circulation of the ocean than of the atmosphere, and for the very same reason: they had not traveled sufficiently. Aristotle thought that there is a flow of water southward from the higher northern part of the earth,^[105] and Macrobius explained a 26series of currents in the oceanic belts which he imagined surrounded the earth.^[106] Certain currents of the Mediterranean attracted attention: the constant flow from the Euxine into the Aegean and the fluctuating currents of the Strait of Messina and the Euripus (between Euboea and the mainland). A tradition arose at later times that the death of Aristotle was caused by his disgust at being unable to explain to his satisfaction the currents of the Euripus.^[107]

Only with the travels of Pytheas of Marseilles along the North Atlantic coasts, the expedition of Alexander, and Nearchus’ voyage and exploration of the mouths of the Indus and coasts of Beluchistan and Mekran did the Greeks gain any adequate knowledge of tidal phenomena; for the tides of the Mediterranean, except in a few places, are so low as to be almost negligible.^[108] Eratosthenes thought that the currents through narrows in the Mediterranean are caused by variations in the relative levels of the sea at either end of the channels and that these variations are a response of the sea to fluctuations of the tides in the ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules.^[109] As early as the third century before the Christian era the Greeks had understood the relation of the moon’s phases to the ebb and flood, but certainly not much earlier, for Aristotle appears to have been ignorant of it.^[110] Posidonius was the first to give a full account of the manner in which the moon and sun regulate the tides.^[111] He had accurate knowledge of the diurnal, the monthly, and perhaps the annual tidal periods,^[112] a knowledge which formed a bulwark of the structure of his astrology. Pliny also believed that the tides were caused by lunar influence and described the three periods with even greater accuracy than Posidonius.^[113] He recognized that the tides must correspond to a lunisolar cycle of one hundred lunations, or eight years, an astronomical cycle that had long been familiar to the Greeks.^[114] He included in his account an astute observation that the tides, like everything else on the earth’s surface depending on celestial controls, tend to drag behind the time when these controls are exerted.^[115] Seneca does not try to explain the tides; he mentions them only incidentally in connection with a graphic description of the terrible deluge that will 27overwhelm the earth at the end of the Great Winter. Though in some respects like the spring tides at the equinoxes, when the sun and moon are in conjunction, this flood will be bound by no law of nature and will have no curb to its fury.^[116] Macrobius’ explanation of the tides,^[117] which was copied by many later writers, though ingenious, was not founded on actual knowledge or observation. He said that the ebb and flood are caused by the impact of the opposing currents of the two ocean belts which encircle the earth, and, with Eratosthenes, he thought that the tide of the Mediterranean is a repercussion of the ocean tides. Indeed, after the time of Pliny there was no addition to the scientific understanding of tidal phenomena until the eighth century.

Subterranean Channels

Evaporation was given by Aristotle as a reason why the sea does not overflow its bed on account of the constant inflow from the rivers.^[118] Another explanation of this puzzling circumstance was found by Pliny^[119] in a curious theory that prevailed throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages to the effect that the land is seamed with veins, cavities, and tunnels.^[120] Into some of these the air enters; others are the passages for rivers which sink into the ground; through still others the water of the sea finds its way to wells, springs, and fountains, where, made fresh by its passage through the earth, it bursts forth to form rivers which return it to the sea. A continuous circulation of the waters of the earth is thus maintained through passages corresponding to the veins, arteries, and canals of the human body.^[121]

The origin of the latter theory is undoubtedly to be sought for partly in the nature of the ground in Greece and the Aegean region and partly in the age-old belief that the interior of the earth is the abode of the dead.

The soluble character of the limestone rocks throughout parts of the Balkan Peninsula has led to the production of what is now known as karst topography, so called from the Karst, a plateau between Trieste and Fiume, where it has attained its most typical development. In such regions many streams disappear into hollows of the ground; caverns and underground galleries are 28extremely common; and the traveler occasionally comes across a full-grown river bursting out of the depths of the earth. The old and persistent story that the river Alpheus of the Peloponnesus passes beneath the Ionian Sea only to gush forth in the well of Arethusa in Syracuse was destined to have a medieval counterpart in the explanation of the subterranean courses of the rivers of Paradise.

Rivers of the Underworld

Among the most famous and sinister of the subterranean streams of antiquity were the dark waters of Cocytus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Styx.^[122] These were the streams of the nether world, the world of the dead. Belief in the subterranean position of the after-world, the Hades of the Greeks, the Inferi of the Italian folk, was widespread and lasting among early Mediterranean peoples. Hellenic mythology placed not only Tartarus, the abyss of torment, but also the Elysian Fields in the depths. Plato taught that within the bowels of the earth are immense caverns, some filled with fire, some with water, others the abode of the shades. To be sure, rationalistic arguments against such doctrines were raised by the incredulous. Aristotle had believed that of all four elements the earth is the most dense and solid and that its position is at the center of the universe. Although the earth might be seamed with small water channels, it would be a reversal of the physical laws of the universe to suppose that within it there could exist caverns large enough to “hold Tartarus, the Elysian Fields, and the infinite multitude of the dead” (Cumont).^[123] Hence some would identify the Elysian Fields with the Islands of the Blessed, placing them in the antipodes, and would relegate Tartarus to the lowest hollow of the celestial sphere.^[124] But even this explanation could not be reconciled with the more mature cosmography of the Alexandrian age. The Epicureans resorted to out-and-out disbelief in a future life and future dwelling place of the spirit.^[125] Others looked for the shades in the atmosphere below the moon’s orbit or else treated the whole problem in a lofty vein of allegory. Rationalistic questioning of the subterranean position of the next world, 29however, did not shake faith in this doctrine as it persisted among the ignorant, and the doctrine was given new life, if in somewhat different forms, by the Neoplatonic movement and the influx of Oriental cults during the waning years of the Western Empire.^[126] The Neoplatonists reverted to Plato’s theory that the interior of the earth may well include hollows large enough to contain the future abode of men’s souls. The religion of Mithras tended to spread throughout the Occident the dualistic cosmology of an eternal conflict between the powers of light and goodness on high and the powers of darkness and evil below. In the words of Franz Cumont, whose truly fascinating study of this subject we are here following: Oriental dualism cut “the abode of the souls into two halves, of which it placed one in the luminous sky and the other in subterranean darkness. This was also the conception which, after some hesitation, became generally accepted by the Church and which for long centuries was to remain the common faith of Christendom.”^[127] In the period with which it is our special problem to deal, then, we shall find that Hell is almost invariably placed in the heart of the earth.^[128]

Origin of Rivers

To return from this digression to the vexed question of the origin of super-terrestrial rivers, we find that the circulation of water from the sea either by underground passages or by rain was not regarded by the majority of ancient thinkers as sufficient to account for the huge volumes of water that rivers constantly pour into the sea. Plato had thought that there were enormous reservoirs in the interior of the earth which served to keep the rivers supplied,^[129] but Aristotle rejected this hypothesis.^[130] A reservoir as large as the entire earth, he said, would be necessary for the purpose. His explanation was worked out of the theory that one element actually may be transformed into another. In a relatively unscientific age what is more natural than to believe, when one sees soluble substances passing into solution in water, that they actually become water? Or when one sees the condensation of invisible vapor into clouds and of clouds into rain, that the air is actually turning to water? Aristotle, followed 30by Seneca,^[131] argued that the air which penetrates into the internal cavities and recesses of the earth is chilled and liquefied by the cold encountered there, just as air seems to be condensed by cold in the outer atmosphere. Aristotle cited as a proof of this the supposed fact that most great rivers have their sources in mountains.^[132] Mountains were to be looked upon as enormous elevated sponges exuding water on all sides. Aristotle concluded likewise that the northern part of the earth must be high and mountainous,^[133] because many great rivers originate there. But, if the air is transmutable into water, why, then, was it not perfectly logical to suppose that the earth could also undergo a similar change? This as a theory to explain the origin of some of the water of rivers was clearly expressed by Seneca and, among the early Church Fathers, by Gregory of Nyssa.^[134] The faulty character of Seneca’s scientific thought is seen in his failure to account satisfactorily for the logical demands of his theory, i. e. for the replacement of the land lost by its liquefaction.

The Nile Flood

One of the natural phenomena most puzzling to the Greeks and Romans was the inundation of the Nile.^[135] Herodotus in his famous book on Egypt had given a lengthy account of the Nile and what it meant to Egypt. He had called Egypt the “gift of the Nile,” for he understood the alluvial character of the country. His theory as to the cause of the flood—he held that the normal height of the river was its flood height but that the etesian winds, by driving the sun southward out of its course in winter, caused the sun to dry up the headwaters of the stream—was less successful than his description of the features of the flood itself. Seneca also gives a long and extremely picturesque description of the inundation^[136] and sets forth various older explanations of its origin, all of which he tries to refute without presenting an opinion of his own. He tells how, starting in the upper reaches of the river, the flood travels downstream and arrives in Egypt about midsummer; how it adds to the fertility of the country by its deposits of silt; and how—here Seneca repeats the crisp phrase of Herodotus—Egypt is the creation of its stream. Among the 31various theories which he comments upon and refutes it is rather significant to find one which had been propounded by Anaxagoras and which is now recognized, in part at least, as the right explanation: that the high water is caused by the melting of the snows on the Ethiopian mountains. Seneca said that there were twenty proofs available to refute this hypothesis.^[137] Another view which Seneca rejected was that the flood was caused by the etesian winds backing up the water, a theory fated to reappear in many medieval books, among them the Expositio in hexaemeron of Peter Abelard.^[138] Pliny discussed the Nile and its peculiarities.^[139] Like Herodotus, he believed that it rises in the western part of Africa and reaches the Sudan and Upper Egypt only after a series of long subterranean journeys. He described the flood, giving statistics of the various heights of the water on the nilometer and explaining which heights meant plenty and which meant famine. He shows a lack of critical sense in his remarks on the causes of the high water; for he held that two theories are equally worthy of credence, the theory of the etesian wind, which we have just examined, and the true explanation that the floods are due to summer rains in Ethiopia.

The Lands

To turn now from water to land. We have already discussed Aristotle’s idea of the gradual transposition of continents and oceans under the control of the celestial bodies. Pliny describes a large number of local changes of land and sea:^[140] the building of new land by alluvial deposits, the sudden appearance of land and islands out of the depths of the waters, the separation of islands from the mainland, the tying of islands to the shore, the total disappearance of entire countries beneath the sea—Plato’s Atlantis is given as an example^[141]—the collapse of mountains; but in all this, though he tells where such prodigies took place, he rarely tries to explain how and why they happened.

Earthquakes and Volcanoes

The explanation of the causes of earthquakes and volcanoes, however, was attempted by Plato, Aristotle, Pliny, Seneca, and 32many other writers of antiquity with no small measure of ingenuity. We have seen that ancient philosophers almost universally were of the opinion that the earth is honeycombed with cavities and subterranean passages. Plato said that some of these cavities were filled with water and air but that others contained mighty swamps and streams of fire, including the immense fiery river Pyriphlegethon. The volcanoes of the earth’s surface were outpourings from these internal streams, and their minglings with the atmosphere and strivings to burst forth were the cause of earthquakes.^[142] Aristotle, on the other hand, denied the possibility of subterranean fires. According to his scheme of physics the place for fire in the universe was above the sphere of air. He maintained that the dry and smokelike exhalation which causes the winds of the atmosphere not only penetrates into the cavities of the earth from the outside but is generated within the earth’s interior^[143] and that when this exhalation tries to escape and is opposed by any obstacle—for example, by the sea—there is a tremendous upheaval and the land is shaken. Seneca^[144] and Pliny^[145] ascribed the cause of earthquakes to the winds. Pliny believed that after a great storm, in which wind is driven down and compressed in the interior of the earth, it frequently strives to come forth and in so doing shakes the earth’s surface far and wide. Occasionally, if the pressure is too tremendous to be withstood by the crust of the earth, the winds burst through, accompanied by a violent tempest and a rain of sparks and cinders. Aristotle describes such a volcanic eruption in the Eolian (Lipari) Isles.^[146] While this was the explanation of violent eruptions, the quiescent volcanic activity of mountains like Etna was usually attributed to a different cause. Pliny^[147] speaks of Etna, Chimaera in Lycia, and various other volcanoes as burning, and it would seem that he connected them with such phenomena as burning naphtha wells and pits of bitumen and sulphur.

Height of Mountains

A word must be said about classical estimates of the height of mountains.^[148] Aristotle suggested that these altitudes might be determined by observing the duration of sunlight on the peaks. 33He would have us believe that the Caucasus range is illumined by the sun for a third of the night after sunset and for a corresponding time before sunrise. If this were true, these mountains would be from 60 to 180 miles high!^[149] Less fantastic were the estimates of Dicaearchus and Eratosthenes. The former, Pliny tells us, measured Pelion and found it to be 1250 paces (10 stades) in height.^[150] If we are right in our understanding of the length of the pace here employed, this represents 5167 feet^[151]—certainly not far short of the actual altitude (5308 feet). We do not know the method used by Dicaearchus in this survey, but his calculation was probably determined from simple triangulation with the aid of a diopter, an instrument for measuring angles.^[152] Triangulation as a means of finding the height of trees and buildings was well understood. Eratosthenes probably did not carry out a triangulation of his own but adopted the results obtained by Dicaearchus, asserting that the highest mountains in the world do not exceed 10 stades in elevation. He demonstrated by an ingenious and graphic mathematical proof that the volume of mountains is so utterly insignificant in comparison with the volume of the earth as a whole that the earth can be regarded as essentially a sphere,^[153] a conception which became well established in the astronomical thought of antiquity and one which reappeared in the Middle Ages.^[154] When the Greeks learned something of the Alps, they were able to correct Eratosthenes’ underestimate of the maximum height of mountains. Posidonius argued that 15 instead of 10 stades should be taken as the correct figure and that the maximum depth of the sea was no greater than 15 stades.^[155]

Mathematical geography deals in part with the accurate determination of the location of places and with the accurate representation of the earth’s surface on maps.

Mathematical Geography Largely Based on Itineraries

The method almost universally employed by ancient geographers for determining locations was the compilation of itineraries; 34the position of a place was found, not by accurate surveys, but by reference to other places at so many stades or so many days’ journey in such and such a direction. Whatever maps the Romans may have had (for example the great representation of the Empire set up by Agrippa in the Porticus Octaviae in Rome) were probably compiled entirely from route traverses. The greater part of the information which even the most accurate and scientific of the Greek geographers, Eratosthenes, Marinus of Tyre, and Ptolemy, possessed, was drawn from such itineraries and from estimates of sea voyages. The figures for the latitude and the longitude of the large number of places given in Ptolemy’s Geography are for the most part not the result of astronomical observations, and the tables cannot be regarded as analogous to modern tables of latitudes and longitudes but must be considered rather as guides for the construction of maps.^[156]

Other methods besides these simple reckonings of locations were well known, none the less.

Astronomical Determination of Latitude

The determination of latitude has always been a comparatively easy astronomical problem. No complicated instruments are needed to measure either the vertical elevation of the sun on the meridian or of the north celestial pole, and from both of these the latitude of the observer can be calculated with extreme accuracy. The instrument commonly used by the Greeks for measuring the angle of the sun^[157] consisted of an hemispherical bowl (scaphe) with a vertical rod (gnomon) for a radius. The shadow of the rod on the concave interior of the bowl gives the elevation of the sun (with an error of 16′^[158]) and thereby the latitude. Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy were all familiar with the latitudes of several places that had thus been determined.

Astronomical Determination of Longitude

To find longitude by astronomical means is a more difficult matter for people who have neither chronometers nor telegraphs. Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Pliny, and Ptolemy all understood that it may be found by observing the time of eclipses in different 35localities.^[159] Hipparchus believed that an extensive series of observations should be carried out in order to ascertain, by mathematical and astronomical means alone, latitudes and longitudes of a large number of places.^[160] To facilitate such a survey he prepared tables of lunar eclipses and tables to aid in the determination of latitudes, but the practical difficulties of the undertaking were too great and the work was never completed. In fact, throughout antiquity the total number of places whose position had thus been accurately determined probably does not exceed half a dozen, if it is as many.

Pliny gives^[161] an account of two different occasions when observations were made of the same eclipse at two different places. He says that at the time of the battle of Arbela the moon was eclipsed at the second hour of the night, when at the same hour it was rising in Sicily. He also speaks of an eclipse of the sun that was seen in Campania between the seventh and eighth hours and in Armenia between the eleventh and twelfth, indicating a difference in longitude of four hours, or 60°. The actual distance is no more than half of this. Ptolemy also cites^[162] the eclipse of 331 B. C. as giving the distance between Carthage and Arbela. We shall see later that much greater accuracy was attained by the Arabs in their calculations of longitude and that some of their figures were passed on to the Western world in astronomical tables during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Cartography

Little need be said of the cartography of antiquity,^[163] for although medieval maps undoubtedly owe much to classical predecessors, none of the classical maps which were destined directly to influence the cartography of the Middle Ages have come down to us. Indeed we have good copies of only two. These are the maps of Ptolemy and the so-called Tabula Peutingeriana,^[164] or Peutinger Table. Ptolemy’s maps exerted no influence whatever on the cartography of the age of the Crusades.^[165]

The Tabula Peutingeriana is preserved in a manuscript of the twelfth century or earlier and probably was originally copied 36from a large chart showing the main routes and provinces of the Roman Empire. It is an extremely long and narrow affair in which the geography is woefully distorted. Though in itself hardly representative of the best in the Roman cartographer’s art, the original may have been compiled from a contemporary Roman map of the world and adapted through its long and narrow form to the especial purpose of illustrating itineraries. We know that maps of the world were officially drawn in imperial Rome and posted up for the benefit of the public: the one constructed by the order of Agrippa and Augustus in the Porticus Octaviae was the most famous;^[166] and others are mentioned in literary sources.^[167] Certain medieval maps of the world are possibly related to some of these Roman charts,^[168] but unfortunately in the absence of the Roman maps themselves the exact relationships cannot satisfactorily be worked out.

Although the ancient astronomers knew a variety of projections for representing the heavens—stereographic, orthographic, and others^[169]—these were not applied to maps of the earth until long after our period. Ptolemy describes several projections, among them the conic, which he may have used; but there is no question of any mathematical projections in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and none of the cartographers of that period took account of the fact that they were endeavoring to show a globe on a flat surface.

We have seen what the geographers of antiquity thought about the general distribution of land and water and about the physical processes of the earth’s surface. We now must study a subject which is less concerned with what they thought than with what they actually knew—however vague and inexact this knowledge was. Though the heritage of knowledge which antiquity left to the Middle Ages of the countries and regions of the oikoumene was vast, much had been lost and much garbled in the process of transmission. Hence it would be beside the point to discuss the details of topographic information contained in the works of Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy; our aim is merely to indicate in a 37broad way the limits of the regional knowledge of the ancient world. This can best be done by sketching the various stages in which the horizon of geography was expanded until it reached the Shetlands and Scandinavia in the north, China in the east, and, perhaps, the Central African mountains in the south.

Expansion of Greek Regional Knowledge

Homer’s geographical horizon was limited by the Mediterranean—one might almost say Aegean—shores; Italy, Sicily, and everything to the west was a realm of fable, and his acquaintance with the Black Sea coasts was little better. The colonizing movement of the eighth to the sixth centuries before Christ brought Greek settlers to these coasts; and through them there was gained some acquaintance with the country behind them, which found expression in the writings of Hecataeus at the close of the sixth century. With this writer ancient geography begins to assume its familiar classical form. He shows some slight knowledge of Central Asia beyond the Caspian Sea and is even aware of the existence of India—or at least of the northwestern portions of that peninsula. The great struggle with Persia brought the Greeks into much closer relations with Asia, and a corresponding increase in geographical knowledge ensued. This was summed up by Herodotus. Much of his geography is fabulous and legendary, but much of it is of surprising detail and accuracy. The voyage of Scylax of Caryanda from the Indus to the Persian Gulf had brought the Indian Ocean within Greek ken. Herodotus also describes the rivers of Scythia and of Central Asia and displays detailed familiarity with Egypt and northeastern Africa; he knew less of the West, although at about this same time the voyages of the Carthaginian Hanno in the Atlantic Ocean extended the horizon at least as far as the Canaries, which were destined to remain on the limits of the known world in that direction for many centuries to come. Shortly after Herodotus, Ctesias, who had lived seventeen years at the Persian court, wrote his Persica and Indica, in which we find collected together many of the fabulous and marvelous tales of Oriental animals and monsters which were later to figure so 38strikingly in the Historia naturalis of Pliny, in the medieval encyclopedias, and in the Physiologus, a collection of animal lore widely read in the Middle Ages. Further detail regarding the local features of Mesopotamia and Armenia was learned from the expedition of Cyrus and preserved for the future in Xenophon’s Anabasis. But the events which did most to expand the regional knowledge of the ancients were those connected with Alexander’s conquests and with the reigns of his successors. Alexander’s march in itself opened to Greek eyes wide territories that had been unknown before; it brought Greek armies and, after them, Greek merchants into the innermost heart of Asia; it established direct connections with India; rumors reached the companions of Alexander of an enormous island of Taprobane in the Southern Ocean, an island which we now recognize to be Ceylon. With the voyage of Nearchus came a better understanding of the Indian seas; and subsequently under Seleucus I (Nicator), Megasthenes, who was sent as ambassador to the court of an Indian potentate on the Ganges, gave a detailed description of the tribes and products of Hindustan, more extensive notes on Taprobane, and—unfortunately—a repetition of the fabulous legends of Ctesias. Patroclus, in command of the easternmost provinces of the kingdom of Antiochus I, provided some valuable statistical and geographical facts about the peoples of the Caspian region, although he was quoted as an authority for the belief that the Caspian communicates with the outer ocean and that it is an easy matter to sail thence to India.

Geography at Alexandria

In addition to the reports of travelers and eyewitnesses, the establishment of Greek control over Egypt and the greater part of southwestern Asia led to a scientific awakening that centered in Alexandria. One of the greatest triumphs of Hellenistic science was the geographical and astronomical school that flourished at Alexandria under the Ptolemies. Eratosthenes and Hipparchus were undoubtedly the most famous representatives of this school, and in them we see the culmination of Greek scientific geography; for their work, all things considered, surpassed 39that of Claudius Ptolemy, and the work of no other man approached it. Though Eratosthenes’ researches were significant mainly in the field of mathematical geography, he made use of much of the regional knowledge which was available in the library at Alexandria and which he could gain from enterprising Greek traders, administrators, and soldiers who had actually visited the countries with which he deals in his treatises.

One striking result of this broadening of regional knowledge was the lesson it taught in regard to the countries south of the Tropic of Cancer. The progress of exploration in Upper Egypt and in India showed that these countries were not only habitable but thickly settled. Adherents of what we have called the Cratesian theory were obliged to acknowledge that the tropic could not be taken as the beginning of the burning zone. Eratosthenes pushed the limit of the oikoumene as far south as latitude 11½° N.^[170]

Hellenistic Regional Knowledge

While Greek military enterprise had been opening up the Orient and exploratory enterprise penetrating the tropics, an important advance was made in the direction of the northwestern seas and the British Isles. The voyage of Pytheas of Marseilles, about 330 B. C., had brought within the scope of ancient knowledge Britain, Scandinavia, Thule, and the frozen ocean beyond. Thus, in the Hellenistic period the frontiers of knowledge included the Orkneys, Shetlands, Faroes—or whatever of the northern isles was meant by Thule—the Canaries, tropical Africa, and Ceylon. No further notable extension of these borders seems to have been made until the first century after Christ, except that vague rumors of a people called “Seres” and of the use of silk had crept into the Roman world in Virgil’s time. This may have indicated acquaintance with China, although Horace took the Seres to be a tribe of Central Asia.^[171] The Scythian invasions which overwhelmed the Greek kingdom of Bactria and the conquest by the newly risen power of Parthia of the provinces of the Seleucids east of the Euphrates tended to cut all communication with the interior and farther parts of the Asiatic continent; but the Mithridatic wars, as described by Theophanes, familiarized the 40public with the local geography of Armenia, Pontus, and the Caucasus. Similarly Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul, Germany, and Britain opened Western Europe to the Roman world.

Regional Knowledge of Mela and Pliny

The most complete and accurate summing up of the regional geography of the ancients was the Geography of Strabo, written in Greek probably shortly before 17 A. D. But, as we have seen, this work was unknown to our period of the Middle Ages, when men had to rely on Latin writers like Pomponius Mela and Pliny, whose writings were of distinctly inferior quality and included a great deal of fabulous and worthless material. Devoid of that critical judgment which characterized Eratosthenes and Strabo, Mela and Pliny were content to bring together huge quantities of miscellaneous information, much of which was derived from antiquated Greek sources. Mela, for example, closely follows Herodotus’ description of the marvels of Asia, and Pliny retails many of the fanciful legends of Ctesias and Megasthenes. Pliny’s contributions to geography were somewhat more satisfactory than those of Mela; for he added some details about Asia that had not been mentioned before, especially in his description of Serica and of India and in his account of the monsoons. On the other hand Mela was the first writer to mention the Baltic Sea, or “Sinus Codanus,” which he described as a great gulf full of islands.

The “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea”

Nearly contemporaneously with Pliny there came an advance in the knowledge of the Indian Ocean in the anonymous Greek Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a manual for sailors and merchants. This is of interest because it gave indications of the existence of coasts and islands beyond India, the islands of Chryse, the land of the Seres, and, at the end of the earth to the east, a region of “Thin”—the first mention of the word “China” in the West unless we take into account the “Sinim” of Isaiah xlix, 12, which may or may not have referred to the great nation of the Far East.

41At about the same time, as we have already seen, the upper reaches of the Nile, possibly as far as the great marshes of the White Nile in about latitude 9° N., were explored by the expedition described by Seneca and Pliny which Nero sent out to solve the age-long mystery’ of the sources of the river of Egypt.^[172] Pliny accordingly placed the southern border of the oikoumene some 7½° south of the position to which Eratosthenes had assigned it, or at about latitude 4° N.^[173]

Limits of Ancient Regional Knowledge on the South and East

Before the days of Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy the limits of geographical knowledge were again much extended both southward and eastward. The Ptolemaic map depicts a wealth of detail in the interior of Africa, although we are unable to say with assurance what most of this detail represents in reality.^[174] Ptolemy certainly had some knowledge of the great lakes and mountains of east-central Africa. The snow-covered mountains which he placed at the sources of the Nile may be associated with reports derived from the east coast of Africa, of Kenya, Kilimanjaro, or possibly the Ruwenzori range.^[175] Farther to the west he describes a river, the Nigir, flowing from a region south of the country of the Garamantes (probably modern Fezzan) to the westward into a lake near the Atlantic. It seems altogether likely that by this river he meant the Niger. Ptolemy mentions two expeditions that had been made at an unknown period to the south from the land of the Garamantes, one under Septimius Flaccus, who arrived at the country of the Ethiopians after three months’ journey, and the other under Julius Maternus and the king of the Garamantes, a four months’ journey to a country called Agisymba, abounding in rhinoceroses. Ptolemy’s regional knowledge certainly extended as far south as the equator, and he was well aware of the fact that the equatorial zone is inhabited.

In the east, also, the Ptolemaic map reveals an advance in knowledge over its predecessors. Chryse appears as a peninsula, and other islands and coasts are shown that certainly indicate familiarity with the Malay Peninsula and China, possibly also 42with Borneo and Java. We shall find, however, that these valuable extensions of knowledge eastward and southward were universally lost sight of in the West in the Middle Ages and that cosmographers were united in placing India or Paradise as the farthest end of the world in the one direction and either the shores of the Ethiopian Ocean immediately beyond the Garamantes or the edge of the uninhabitable zone at the tropic or not far beyond it, as the extreme limit in the other.^[176]

The geographical lore of antiquity was carried over to the Western Europe of the Crusading age by the Christians of the first eleven centuries of our era and by the Moslems. In this chapter we shall study the manner in which it was transmitted, transformed, and augmented by Christian agencies.

Scriptural Influence on Early Medieval Geography

Our primary problem is to examine the effects of Christianity on geographical knowledge and belief, effects which sprang in large measure from men’s varying attitudes toward the Bible. Some believed that Scripture contains the absolute and only truth, but others were willing to grant a partial authority to pagan teachings. The evolution of science was profoundly modified by the conflicts between these divergent tendencies of thought and by the efforts made to reconcile one with the other. The general result spelled disaster to clear thinking in geography. Moreover, many of the facts which the scholars of antiquity had gathered together were wholly lost sight of in the confusion that accompanied the disintegration of Roman civilization. The horizon of the known world was narrowed from the wide bounds it had reached in the time of Ptolemy.^[177] New information acquired by exploration and travel was ignored; and a host of legends, fancies, and false theories took the place of the reasonably accurate body of information which the Greeks and Romans had possessed.

Ignorance of the Best Work of Antiquity

During these long years Constantinople was the only great metropolis of Christendom, the only center where the arts and 44sciences of civilization were cultivated without interruption. We might expect, therefore, that the Byzantine influence upon Western geography would be as marked as it was upon Western art and architecture. But this was not the case. However much the scholars of Constantinople may have been interested in the historians of antiquity, they neglected the geographers; and the scientific geography of the Greek Empire was at best a work of lifeless compilation and commentary. Furthermore, knowledge of Greek was at no time widespread in the West until the Renaissance, and the great majority of Western scholars were profoundly ignorant of Byzantine literature.^[178] For their geography the men of the Occident turned rather to the Bible and to the mediocre and worse than mediocre works of an age of intellectual degeneracy. Solinus, Martianus Capella, Macrobius, Aethicus of Istria, and Orosius became authorities from which later writers derived their facts.

Scientific Stagnation During the Early Middle Ages

The earlier Fathers of the Church, whatever may have been their merits as theologians and dialecticians, were not distinguished by an ability to understand the truths of natural science or to combat error in that field. With the establishment of the barbarian kingdoms between the sixth and eighth centuries came an epoch of mental stagnation in nearly all realms of science and scholarship. Learning in general and geography in particular suffered almost universal eclipse. Yet dark and ignorant as the times may have been, the torch of civilization was kept burning, if feebly, by a few Irish and English monks^[179] and by contacts with the Levant that were maintained through Greek, Asiatic, and Egyptian traders in the principal cities of Europe.^[180] If not much authentic geographical information was contributed to Western society by these agents of enlightenment, they served to disseminate certain geographical legends and traditions destined to seize a strong hold on the Western imagination.

In the days of Charlemagne came the new awakening sometimes known as the “Carolingian Renaissance;” and, although tenth-century Europe relapsed temporarily into a torpor, a 45current of theological interest and, with it, interest in the natural sciences had by then once more set in—a current which was to reach full flood at the time of the Crusades.

What works widely read during these centuries served as sources of geographical information for the scholar of the era of the Crusades?

The Bible

First and foremost we must place the Bible. Certainly in the pagan world no one book had ever held the paramount position in the minds of thoughtful men that Scripture held during the Middle Ages. As we saw in the Introduction, the two great fountainheads of medieval geography were the works of Greek philosophers and historians and the Bible. The geographic material in Scripture is neither very extensive nor very explicit in comparison with the contributions of such writers as Strabo and Ptolemy to the geographic education of mankind, and yet so tremendous was its authority that it tended at one time completely to supersede classical teachings. Slight and confusing as may have been its geographical references, the man of the Middle Ages attached to all of them paramount importance. Simply compare a map of the world reconstructed from Ptolemy’s data^[181] with one of the crude Beatus sketches reflecting Biblical beliefs,^[182] and some of the changes which the reading of Scripture had wrought become strikingly apparent.

Genesis was the most important book of the Bible from the geographical point of view. Here we find, in the history of the Creation, texts which were the starting point of many speculations about the origin of the world and the elucidation of which was attempted in many a long commentary on the Works of the Six Days.^[183] Furthermore, in Genesis we find the description of Paradise and its four rivers, which figured largely on most medieval maps, and the account of the division of the earth among the descendants of Noah, which lay at the bottom of the crude ethnography of the Middle Ages. By some writers the 46description of the tabernacle of the Lord and its furnishings^[184] was regarded as an allegorical account of the heavens and earth. Gog and Magog, described in Genesis, Ezekiel, and Revelation, were prominent among the supposed medieval tribes of Asia.^[185] And in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, which, though technically not a part of Scripture, were often given the authority of Scriptural truth, we find accounts of the preaching of the Gospel in far lands, India, Ethiopia, Babylonia.^[186]

Writings of the Church Fathers

These and many other incidental references gave rise to those relatively restricted portions of the vast mass of patristic literature which deal with geography, but which nevertheless inevitably marked out the channels that certain elements of geographic thought and tradition were destined to follow until the beginnings of the Renaissance. How these passages were interpreted was, then, of great importance.^[187]

Interpretation of the Bible

According to the Church Fathers there were four methods of interpretation; but for our purposes we need consider only two of these, the literal and the allegorical.^[188] Both led to pitfalls: the literal interpretation tended to narrow the thought and make it correspond to the exact words of a text; the allegorical, unjustifiably to expand the meaning of simple statements.^[189] To these dangers were added the difficulties and contradictions due to the manifold authorship of Scripture and to the misunderstanding of passages woefully faulty from the textual point of view.

Yet the writers of the early Christian age were in most cases unaware of these pitfalls and did not even know when they had fallen into them. Faith in the truth of the Holy Word was usually sufficient to render men supremely oblivious to conflicting and inconsistent assertions that would otherwise have been revolting to reason. Tertullian said: “When we believe, we desire nothing besides belief. For we believe this in the beginning: that there is nought which we need to believe beyond it.”^[190]

This faith in the truth of the written Word persisted throughout the Middle Ages and down to our own day. During the earliest Christian centuries the Bible was sometimes regarded as the only source of truth, and the teachings of pagan writers were often looked upon with abhorrence. Lactantius Firmianus (early fourth century), with an inconsistency characteristic of many of the Church Fathers, made use in his Institutiones divinae of the classical authors themselves to prove the supposed fallacies and evils of pagan science.^[191] About the fourth century men began to try to amplify and expound the fundamental Biblical truths by appeal to the legacy of classical learning. To effect a reconciliation and combination of Christian teachings with the classics—especially the works of Plato and his followers—became one of the main preoccupations of theologians. Platonic and Neoplatonic influences made themselves felt in the thought of churchmen and scholars, and among the most popular works of the entire period was Chalcidius’ translation of the Timaeus of Plato. Neoplatonism was interwoven into the theological system of Augustine.^[192] In the ninth century it appears in the writings of the great Irish scholar, John Scot Erigena.^[193] In the tenth and eleventh centuries the Platonic commentary by Macrobius on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis enjoyed an immense vogue;^[194] it was read by the mathematician and astronomer Pope Sylvester II (Gerbert) at the end of the tenth century and on the threshold of our period aroused the protests of the more old-fashioned churchmen like Manegold, who objected to the seeds of heresy which it contained.^[195]

Encyclopedic Compilations

For more strictly geographical, rather than “cosmogonic” or cosmological material, we must turn to the encyclopedias rather than to the thoughtful and speculative theological books of such men as Augustine. Like the mighty volumes of Aristotle or the Natural History of Pliny these encyclopedias were attempts to encompass and to put in convenient form the entire range of human knowledge. The most significant was the Etymologiae 48sive originum libri XX of Isidore of Seville (died 636 A. D.). This large compilation of miscellaneous information served as a model of style and composition as well as a mine out of which later writers dug their “facts.” For the geographical portions of the Etymologiae, Isidore used the Bible and classical authorities alike; he derived much from Orosius and Solinus; and, though it is doubtful whether he was acquainted with Pliny at first hand,^[196] he incorporated in his book not a little Plinian material taken from Solinus. Isidore’s method was followed, and much of his work copied, by the Irish and English monastic encyclopedists of the eighth and ninth centuries. We find a great deal from Isidore in the Venerable Bede’s (died 735 A. D.) De natura rerum, in Raban Maur’s (776–856 A. D.) De universo, in Dicuil’s De mensura orbis terrae (825 A. D.),as well as in the De imagine mundi of our period. John Scot Erigena, the great Platonist of the eighth century, stands out among his contemporaries as one of the most original and critical scholars of the Middle Ages. The range of his interests was very broad, and it seems probable that he understood Greek. In his De divisione naturae, beside the Latin sources which Isidore, Bede, and other encyclopedists had copied, he made use of the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of Martianus Capella and also of various Greek works, including the Geography of Ptolemy.^[197] Martianus Capella was held in high favor during this epoch, and his works were commented upon by such men as Remy (Remigius) of Auxerre, the master of Gerbert, and by Adam of Bremen.^[198]

Miscellaneous Geographical Writings

Closely akin to the geography of the encyclopedias, and not infrequently borrowed from by the encyclopedists, are a number of miscellaneous writings, which, though intrinsically of slight value, nevertheless profoundly affected the development of geographical ideas. The most important of these was the brief description of the countries of the world forming the second chapter of the first book of Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos (fifth century). Enjoying great popularity, as is testified by the existence of over two hundred manuscripts, this was much plagiarized 49by later scholars: parts of it became incorporated into Isidore’s Etymologiae; it was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred the Great;^[199] and during our period it was extensively quoted and copied by nearly all who attempted to write on geographical subjects. Another of this miscellaneous group is a seventh-century cosmography in barbarous Latin, a pretended translation of a fictitious work originally written in Greek by Aethicus of Istria.^[200] We find set forth here for the first time many of those marvels of Scythia and the northern regions employed by later writers to add interest to their pages. Priscian’s sixth-century translation of the geographical poem^[201] of Dionysius Periegetes was also extensively quoted. In the middle of the seventh century an anonymous cleric of Ravenna wrote a description of the world in five books. Though entirely the result of compilation, this cosmography is in many respects the most elaborate and interesting geographical book dating from the early medieval West. The sources quoted and utilized are extremely varied, including the Bible, “Jordanis” (Jornandes), Ptolemy, Orosius, Isidore, and possibly the Tabula Peutingeriana, in addition to a number of Greek, Roman, and Gothic writings otherwise unknown.^[202] The main importance of the work of the Ravenna geographer in relation to the geography of the Crusading age lies in the fact that a large portion of it was included in a compilation made by a certain Guido in 1119.^[203]

Legends

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries many legends were current in the West, some of which contained geographical elements. Though we shall have occasion to discuss this subject in greater detail later on, the fact should be brought out here that the origin of most of these legends may be traced far back into the centuries before the beginning of the Crusading age.

Perhaps the most significant was the cycle of stories of the exploits and adventures of Alexander the Great which originated in a Greek history purporting to be the work of Callisthenes, a companion of the Macedonian conqueror, and is hence known as the Pseudo-Callisthenes. Written in Alexandria about the beginning 50of the third century after Christ, this work subsequently became widely dispersed through the East, where translations were made into Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and other Oriental tongues. Put into Latin by Julius Valerius about the middle of the fourth century, again translated in the tenth century,^[204] given further Latin vernacular renderings with many additions at later dates, the Romance of Alexander had come, by the time of the Crusades, to form the nucleus of a mass of stories and fables whose scenes were laid in distant Asiatic countries. With it had been associated those mysterious tales and prophecies of Gog and Magog whose origins were ultimately connected with the Biblical revelations of the end of the world.^[205] Alexander the Great and Gog and Magog appear in the Pseudo-Methodius, a book of prophecy which foretold the dread events of the Last Day. Rendered into Latin at an early period from a Greco-Syrian original, the Pseudo-Methodius made a deep impression on the medieval mind, especially at the time of the Mongol invasions in the early thirteenth century.

Writers of our period like Gervase of Tilbury and Giraldus Cambrensis also drew on the legends found in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s mythological history of Britain, many of which had entered into the composition of the Romance of King Arthur. Some of the latter were of slight geographical interest.

Finally, the mythology and folklore of Ireland, with infusions from classical and even Arabic literature, gave rise to the story of the wanderings of St. Brandan^[206] among mysterious islands in the Western Ocean, an account of which we have in a manuscript dating back perhaps to as early a period as the ninth century.^[207]

Books of Travel and Description

The most important books describing actual travels and explorations written between the conversion of Constantine and the Crusades were for the most part in languages unknown to the men of the West—Greek and Arabic. Zemarchus’ account of the tribes and trade of Central Asia^[208] and the Meadows of Gold of Al-Masʿūdī, wherein were described things personally seen by the travelers between Spain and Burma and south as far as Madagascar, 51were treasures of geographical lore unknown to Occidental readers of this age.

In Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammenburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, written in the latter half of the eleventh century, we find a description of the countries of the North. This was based on knowledge acquired from the voyagings of the Northmen between the eighth and eleventh centuries and, together with the Sagas, will be discussed in a later chapter.

From the varied narratives of Christian pilgrims the Western student might have gleaned some arid details about routes eastward and about the topography of the Holy Land.

We saw in the first chapter that Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and most of the other Greek philosophers had believed that the universe is eternal, though subject to ever-recurring destructions by fire or water, followed by “rebirths” (palingeneses).^[209] Aristotle had attributed to the stars control over all occurrences in the sphere below the moon; not only over physical and material happenings, but over the mind and will. He had believed that this was by virtue of the fact that the celestial bodies are formed of a divine substance different from the four corruptible elements which constitute the sublunar world. On this theory of the stars had been built the “science” of astrology.

Christianity Opposed to Belief in an Eternal Universe

What could be more antagonistic to such ideas than the teachings of the Bible? The antagonism, however, was not felt by all the Fathers of the Church. The fascination of Platonism led many to seek for analogies between Greek and Biblical cosmology. Clement of Alexandria, for instance, thought that the destruction of the world by fire prophesied in Deuteronomy (xxxii, 22) was one of those general burnings which would occur when the stars find themselves in conjunction in Cancer.^[210] Indeed, it was a common belief, and one shared by Augustine, that the Greeks themselves had actually derived the best of their theological concepts from the Bible.^[211] But the glaring contradictions 52between Scriptural and classical cosmology could not be overlooked even by the Augustinians, and classical theories of the periodicity of the universe in general were vigorously combated. Christian monotheism could never be reconciled with a fatalistic doctrine that attributed to the stars in their control over the destinies of the world a quality that approached the divine; and through Christian teachings the astrology built on this doctrine was discredited and the stars stripped of their divinity.^[212] This alone was enough to strike a deathblow at the idea of the unvarying periodicity of the universe under celestial controls; but other arguments equally potent were leveled against it. Augustine refused to believe that Christ had been incarnated an infinite number of times in the past or was destined to suffer the Passion an infinite number of times in the future.^[213] Origen declared that another Adam, another Moses, another Judas were unthinkable and asked how the belief in the stellar control of man’s actions and volition could be reconciled with the Christian doctrine of the freedom of the will.^[214]

Perhaps the most fatal argument lay in the express contradiction, by the Old Testament account of the Creation, of the Hellenic idea of an eternally recurrent universe.^[215] Neoplatonist and Peripatetic alike had denied that there ever had been a first day or a first Great Year.^[216] Yet the words of Scripture are very definite and very explicit: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Neither Christian nor Jew could question the meaning of these words nor think otherwise than that all things were created at a certain fixed and calculable point in time or else, following Augustine, that the universe and time were created simultaneously.

In spite of these fatal objections, neither the Great Year theory nor astrology perished completely in the Middle Ages. Lingering on underground, they gave an heretical and pagan tinge to the thought of many a philosopher and theologian during our twelfth and thirteenth centuries and thereafter.^[217]

The Creation

Even the Scriptural history of the Creation did not wholly satisfy the inquiring curiosity of theologians or philosophers. 53One of the primary problems dealt with by scholars was the problem of the first chapters of Genesis. This inquiry led into the domain of metaphysics and theology: through it men hoped to arrive at an understanding of the nature of God and of his relation to the universe, to time, and to man. It also led to innumerable speculations about the actual manner in which the will of God operated in fashioning the world and to discussions of this question from very diverse points of view—literal, allegorical, transcendental. Indeed, there were even a few writers, notably the Venerable Bede, who went so far as to try to reconcile a physical conception of the processes of creation with the account given in the Bible^[218] and who thus prepared the way for more rationalistic studies of the Works of the Six Days in the centuries which were to follow.

Early Christian Belief in a Flat Earth

Prevalent among most peoples in an early stage of their intellectual development is the natural and obvious theory that the earth is a flat disk covered by a dome-shaped heaven. This view was held by the Assyrians, Chaldeans, Egyptians,^[219] and, as we saw in the first chapter, by the early Greeks; it was long believed by the Jews^[220] and is found in the Koran;^[221] it was undoubtedly reflected in the words of Scripture, although what is said there on the subject is by no means definite and occurs in connections wholly incidental to other subjects. We read in Isaiah (xl, 22):^[222] “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”

This can hardly be called an exhaustive dissertation on the shape of the universe, yet on it and on other scraps even less detailed were erected the medieval arguments in favor of the flatness of the earth, a firm belief in which was probably held by the majority of the earlier Church Fathers, especially those of the East.^[223] Not only were the ancient proofs of sphericity overlooked; but such ideas were regarded as heretical, and elaborate new systems were raised on the weak foundations of littleunderstood 54Scriptural texts. The most remarkable theories of the universe, however, were devised by the Greek fathers Patricius, Cosmas Indicopleustes, and Severian of Gabala.^[224] They remained unknown to the men of the Western world and consequently do not concern us. The Latin father Lactantius contented himself with endeavoring to prove by pseudo-scientific means that the earth is not a sphere; a spherical heaven, he argued, does not necessitate a spherical earth; and the idea of the possibility of antipodes was to him thoroughly absurd.^[225]

Early Christian Belief in a Spherical Earth

On the other hand, the theory that the earth is a globe never, perhaps, suffered complete eclipse.^[226] Augustine was non-committal in this regard, evidently troubled and puzzled by contradictory statements in the Bible and in the writings of classical astronomers.^[227] Isidore quotes writers of antiquity who favored a spherical earth, though if we interpret correctly texts in the De natura rerum^[228] and Etymologiae^[229] we are impelled to think that he himself conceived of a flat earth surrounded by a spherical heaven. The Venerable Bede, on the contrary, did not mince matters; he stoutly maintained that the earth is a sphere and cited as proof the fact that stars visible in one latitude are invisible in another.^[230] After the so-called Carolingian Renaissance the world of thinkers seems gradually to have outgrown the primitive notion of a flat earth. To the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii of the Neoplatonist Martianus Capella may be ascribed much of the credit for keeping alive the doctrine of sphericity during these centuries. This immensely popular work, with its condensed argument in favor of a globe-shaped earth, doubtless contributed to the formation of the opinions of men like John Scot Erigena, Gerbert, Hermann of Reichenau, and Adam of Bremen, adherents to the only theory compatible with any observation better than the most superficial and any reasoning better than the most trivial.^[231]

Size of the Earth

With the reëstablishment of the belief in a spherical earth we find men again making conjectures about its size, though there 55is no evidence that attempts were made in Christendom (as in the Moslem world) actually to measure the circumference. In the ninth century John Scot Erigena gave, from Martianus Capella, a full explanation of the famous Eratosthenic measurements.^[232] An unknown author of the ninth or tenth century of a work on geometry often attributed to Gerbert also explained, from Capella, Eratosthenes’ method of measuring a degree;^[233] and the eleventh-century mathematician Hermann of Reichenau^[234] had learned (possibly from Macrobius) how the length of a degree could be ascertained from observations of the pole star. His result, 700 stades, was the same as that of Eratosthenes, a fact which alone indicates that he did not himself undertake any measurement. Thus we see that as a result of the Platonic movement between the ninth and eleventh centuries knowledge of one of the most magnificent achievements of classical geographical investigation had been revived.

Zones

Most Greek thinkers had agreed in dividing the earth’s surface into five zones, though they differed as to whether or not the equatorial zone was habitable. By Ptolemy’s time the discovery of countries in the heart of the tropical regions and possibly beyond had exploded the old idea of an equatorial ocean and fiery belt around the middle of the globe. Unfortunately the broader regional knowledge which had been at Ptolemy’s disposal was lost in the Middle Ages, and older views reappeared. The maps of the period show us the encircling ocean in which Homer had believed, and nearly all writers of the patristic age thought that Africa has a very limited extension toward the south.^[235] Beyond Africa, they said, lies an equatorial ocean and an equatorial zone uninhabitable on account of heat.

The Antipodes

Whether or not there were other regions of the world on the other side of this equatorial zone or beyond the waters of the 56western ocean, and whether or not such regions were inhabited, were questions which piqued the curiosity of the Church Fathers. The possibility of antipodal regions—perhaps continents—must, in the logic of things, have been admitted by those who were ready to believe that the earth is a sphere; and even those who were not believers in the sphericity of the earth were prone to discuss the possibility of a fourth, or austral, continent, usually called by analogy the region of the antipodes, lying immediately south of the equatorial zone.^[236] Bede adopted Crates’ theory of two oceans encircling the earth, east and west, and north and south, dividing its surface into four temperate habitable areas; and after the interest in Macrobius had become widespread in the ninth century this theory undoubtedly must have been generally familiar if not generally accepted.

Whether or not the antipodes were actually inhabited was another matter. Lactantius, who thought that the world is flat, was a determined opponent of the possibility of inhabited antipodes for physical reasons. His arguments were obvious but seem puerile to us: “Is there any one so stupid,” he asked, “as to believe that there are men whose feet are higher than their heads?”^[237] It puzzled him to explain how trees could grow upside down or rain fall upward. More serious were the religious objections to the possibility of inhabited regions in other parts of the earth, for this was as antagonistic to the words of the Bible as the Great Year theory and antagonistic in much the same way. The theory of the antipodes, as generally presented in association with the theory of a fiery equatorial zone, presupposed the existence of other races of men absolutely cut off from our race. How, then, inquired Augustine,^[238] could such races be descended from Adam, who, the Bible tells us, was the forefather of all men? How could Christ have died for antipodeans? How could the Gospel have been preached in “the four corners of the earth” if half the earth is cut off from our quarter by tropical fires? How could the text of Romans x, 18, be true which says: “Yes, verily, their sound went forth over all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world”? Isidore^[239] and Bede^[240] categorically denied the possibility of inhabitants of antipodal 57regions. Their authority, together with the strength of their arguments and the arguments of Augustine, were sufficient to arouse suspicions of the man who ventured to believe in this doctrine. Such a man must certainly be a heretic. A tenth-century interpreter of Boëthius wrote: “God forbid that anybody think we accept the stories of antipodes, which are in every way contradictory to Christian faith.”^[241] In the middle of the eighth century the question reached a head in a controversy between St. Boniface and a certain Virgil, bishop of Salzburg.^[242] The latter, who doubtless thought that there were antipodal regions if not antipodeans, was accused by Pope Zachary, to whom St. Boniface had complained, of holding “perverse and iniquitous doctrines regarding another world.” Unfortunately we do not possess Virgil’s own account of the incident and are unable to tell exactly what these doctrines were.^[243] At all events, belief in antipodes contained the seeds of bitter religious quarrels and was one of the charges brought against Cecco d’Ascoli, who, after our period, was burnt to death for holding this and other damning convictions.^[244]

In the field of physical geography slight was the contribution of the early medieval writers.

Meteorology

Classical ideas about the atmosphere were repeated and garbled,^[245] little progress was made in the development of earlier theories, and little new was added but superstition. Isidore, followed closely by Bede and Raban Maur, was the primary authority in matters of meteorology.^[246] The ancient view persisted, that the polar regions were uninhabitable on account of cold and the equatorial zone on account of heat. The sort of popular meteorology that prevailed is illustrated in an early ninth-century treatise written by Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, and entitled Against the Absurd Opinion of the Vulgar Touching Hail and Thunder.^[247] This was an attack on charlatans who claimed that they could control the weather, produce storms and 58hail at will, and who asserted that there is a region, called Magonia, “whence ships come in the clouds” (Poole’s translation).^[248] Natural enough as it is for the uneducated in any age to believe such things,^[249] the significant fact here is that Agobard did not attempt to invoke scientific arguments to confute the claims of the impostors. Poole says: “He disdained to allege scientific reasons to overthrow what was in its nature unreasonable. He could only fall back on ... broad religious principles. He argued that God’s relation to nature is immediate and least of all conditioned by the artifices of men.”^[250]

The Waters Above the Firmament

One distinctly new idea, however, was introduced by the Bible into the circle of what we may, with a slight stretch of the imagination, consider the medieval physical geography of the water element. This new conception tended to revolutionize theories based on classical physics and to cause much confusion and doubt in the minds of the Fathers of the Church. The orthodox classical physicists had held that the elements normally form four concentric spheres surrounding the center of the universe, in order, from the heaviest to the lightest, earth, water, air, fire. Genesis (i, 6–7) states that “God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters; and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament from those that were above the firmament.” Though belief in waters above the firmament is found in the cosmologies of the ancient Egyptians and Persians and is there closely associated with belief in a disk-shaped earth covered by a dome-shaped heaven, water in such a position was very far removed from its proper place in the scheme of nature of Aristotle and his followers. The Church Fathers, nevertheless, were unwilling to doubt the actual existence of these waters, and in general they accepted the text literally.^[251] Gregory of Nyssa even went to the extent of imagining mountains on the back side of the firmament and that the waters were contained in the hollows and valleys between them.^[252] Others thought the waters were in the form of clouds or fine drops. Jerome, Josephus, 59Ambrose, and Bede all held that the waters were crystal.^[253] Augustine was non-committal, though he gathered together the statements of many who had expressed concrete views on the subject.^[254] Ambrose argued from analogy that if the earth can hang in the center of the universe without support so also can the waters hang unsupported above the firmament.^[255]

The purpose which the waters were to serve was also a thorny problem. Ambrose said they were intended to cool the axis of the universe, overheated by its perpetual rotation;^[256] others thought that they were meant to screen the earth from the fiery heat generated by stars and sun;^[257] others that they were stored up as a reservoir to supply hydraulic resources at the time of the Great Flood.^[258]

The Congregation of the Waters

According to the description of the Creation in the book of Genesis “God also said: Let the waters that are under the heaven be gathered together into one place; and let the dry land appear. And it was so done.” The difficulty in explaining this text was to account for what became of these waters. Great as are the seas, they were not considered large enough to absorb all the primordial waters, and consequently arguments were elaborated in favor of the existence of vast reservoirs within the earth. Bede, for example, was of the opinion that the waters under the firmament at first took the form of clouds and that when they became condensed and fell as rain the water was sequestered in caverns of the earth’s interior.^[259]

Of even greater significance was the assertion that God had gathered the waters below the firmament into “one” place. This could mean nothing else than that all the waters of the earth, whether in subterranean reservoirs, oceans, lakes, rivers, or in the atmosphere, must be connected and must constitute a unit. Probably with this idea in mind Isidore wrote: “The abyss is the deep water which cannot be penetrated, whether caverns of unknown waters from which springs and rivers flow, or the waters which pass secretly beneath, whence it is called abyss. For all waters or torrents return by secret channels to the abyss which is 60their source” (Brehaut’s translation).^[260] Certainly most medieval theorizing about the origin of springs and rivers^[261] was dependent on the doctrine of a “congregation of waters.” In further elaboration of this doctrine it was often said that the water of the sea found its way by underground channels to the Garden of Eden and returned again to the sea, flowing first through a subterranean passage and thence through the four rivers of Paradise. Augustine maintained that the words of Genesis (ii, 6), “But a spring rose out of the earth, watering all the surface of the earth,” mean that all the waters of the earth come from a single source.^[262] Rainfall as a source of springs and well water, however, was also recognized,^[263] and Gregory of Nyssa accepted and elaborated the classical theory of the transmutation of earth into water.^[264]

The Nile Flood

The strange phenomenon of the flood of the Nile brought forth no new theories during the Middle Ages, and Isidore, whose words were most often copied, reverted to the explanation of Thales that the flood was caused by the building of sand bars at the mouth of the river during the summer when the etesian winds blow.^[265]

The Earth Upon the Waters

Another Biblical phrase that provoked discussion of the problems of hydrography was in the one hundred and thirty-fifth Psalm (Vulgate): “Praise ye the Lord of lords, ... Who established the earth above the waters” (qui firmavit terram super aquas). Many writers took this literally and thought of the earth as actually floating upon water, held up by the arbitrary force of God’s will. A few, despite the explicit words of Scripture, were inclined to doubt; they either explained the phrase by urging that the word “above” (super) should be taken to mean “beside” or argued that all that was meant here was that the land rises to a higher level than the sea.^[266] The difficulty was also avoided, as was frequently the case with puzzling Scriptural passages, by saying that the passage was allegorical and should not be taken literally.

There is not much to record about the development of knowledge or theory concerning the physical geography of the sea. The ancients themselves had known little enough about the sea to pass on to an age when maritime ventures were almost unknown—to learned men at least—and certainly we cannot find a great deal of marine lore in the Bible. Occasional glimmerings of intelligence, however, break the darkness of the times in this respect. Dicuil, for instance, in his De mensura orbis terrae, questions Fabianus’ statement that the sea is at most fifteen stades deep. “Has Fabianus measured its depth?” he asks; “if not, how can we believe what he says?”^[267] Bede understood the difference in density between fresh and salt water; and in accord with Isidore and others he explained why the seas do not overflow their banks by pointing out that water is constantly being removed into the air and into the land.^[268]

Though the Church Fathers stood out valiantly against those teachings of astrology which tended to exaggerate the powers of the heavenly bodies, they were none the less ready to admit that the moon may exert a physical attraction on the ocean and in that way may produce the tides. Basil even explained that there is a corresponding lunar control over the atmosphere.^[269] Augustine and Ambrose believed that the moon causes tides;^[270] and a certain Augustine, writing in the seventh century, described the spring and neap tides and tried to show how they follow not only the moon’s phases but also the equinoxes and solstices. He made a serious mistake by placing spring tides at the time of the solstices.^[271] Bede corrected this in his De natura rerum, apparently from personal observation—a rare thing at this time—and noted a number of tidal peculiarities which had not been commented on before.^[272]

Not all writers attributed the action of the tides to the moon. Most significant among the opponents of the lunar theory was Paul the Deacon (720–780 A. D.). In his Historia gentis Langobardorum he described^[273] the maelstrom on the coast of Norway. He asserted that this gigantic whirlpool and another one, which he placed off the coast of Ireland, made the tides by sucking in 62and spewing out vast quantities of water twice a day. With the fashion of reading Macrobius a theory became popular that the flood and ebb result from the impact of opposing ocean currents; and in the twelfth century, as we shall see later,^[274] William of Conches and Giraldus Cambrensis made curious combinations of the theories of Paul the Deacon with those of Macrobius.

The Lands

There was no science of geomorphology in the Middle Ages. The medieval mind interested itself for the most part only in those natural phenomena that force themselves upon the attention or seem out of the ordinary. Commonplace and static elements of the earth’s surface such as hills, valleys, and plains were taken more or less for granted by those who sought to explain the secrets of Nature. In the geographical writings of the period, on the other hand, not a little space was devoted to volcanoes and earthquakes. Their violent and spectacular qualities have made these the object of interest throughout all time. And yet in the early Middle Ages there seems to have been no originality in observing them or in speculating about their causes. Men were content uncritically to accept what classical writers had said.^[275] Isidore, for example, following Aristotle and Pliny, wrote that volcanoes were burning mountains rather than vents for deep-seated terrestrial fires and that the whole of Sicily was filled with seams of sulphur and bitumen, readily kindled by the winds into flame. The eruption of Etna, more especially, was caused by winds driven down into the interior of the earth by the waves of the Strait of Messina.^[276] This theory of vulcanism was reiterated by Bede, Dicuil, and the multitude who copied from Isidore’s work. Other writers explained volcanoes as the outlets of profound subterranean fires,^[277] a view fostered by Plato and one that gained authority in the minds of many of the Church Fathers as well as of laymen through the widespread belief, derived from classical mythology^[278] as well as from the Bible, that the heart of the earth is the seat of Hell.^[279]

Man has been accustomed to look upon the geographical elements of the earth’s surface from widely different points of view. So far we have been concerned with the record of his scientific or pseudo-scientific investigations of these elements. Let us now turn for a moment to his emotional attitude toward them. The impression made upon the heart and imagination by the aspects of countryside, mountain, and sea has constantly changed with changing religious and philosophical beliefs and with shifting social régimes. We may estimate the character of these changes in a multitude of descriptions of landscape and scenery scattered throughout the whole realm of literature.

Esthetic Appreciation of Nature in Antiquity

It is probably safe to assert that there prevailed in antiquity a genuinely esthetic appreciation of nature. If the Greeks seldom made conscious efforts to paint word pictures of the form and colors of their land, their poetry and drama none the less show in many a turn of phrase that they were alive to its beauty. The Romans rejoiced in the tranquil serenity of mild and cultivated landscapes as an escape from the welter of city life.^[280] Perhaps the Roman attitude toward nature was tinged with pessimism, with regret that beauty is transient, that man’s span of life is short, and that all too soon we must cease to find solace in the loveliness of the world.^[281] With the crystallization of Latin literary forms there appeared a stereotyped conception of the ideal landscape in which the essential elements were always the same: a rich meadow shaded by laurels, myrtles, and elms and watered by a murmuring stream, clear and cool; a placid spot where eternal spring prevails and where rain and storm, frost and heat are alike unknown.^[282] This formula was used by the Latin poets in describing the blessed Isles of the Hesperides and the Elysian Fields; ultimately it was employed by the Christians in picturing the terrestrial Paradise.^[283]

A new and different spirit pervaded the early Christian’s attitude towards nature. His thoughts were turned to the world to come and to the glory of the Kingdom of God.

The more austere and ascetic of the Church Fathers believed that, as it is sinful to take pleasure in things of this world, so also sin must lurk in the breast of him who derives personal and esthetic satisfaction from scenes of natural beauty. This is one of the reasons why hermits retired to deserts and rugged mountains, where they might no longer be tempted either by things of the flesh or by the charm of green and level meadows or of rolling, cultivated hillsides. Among some of the hermits there arose an actual love for the grandeur of the very wildernesses to which they betook themselves. Jerome regarded the desert as a place of beauty: in deep valleys, rough mountains, and steep rocks he saw not only negative excellence, in so far as these were free from the pollutions of “civilization,” but also a congenial background for his work and thought.^[284] The eremitic movement was primarily characteristic of the Eastern branch of Christendom, but it extended to the West, where its influence was powerful during the early centuries of our era.^[285] Nevertheless an ascetic disdain for the haunts of man and glorification of the wilderness was, at best, alien to Western modes of thought. The normal habit of the Occidental Christian was, rather, to take joy in the immensity of earth and heaven and in the marvelous detail of the created world because these stand as manifestations of the unity and glory of the Deity, symbols of the omnipotence of God.

Revival of Esthetic Feeling in the Middle Ages

On the other hand, pleasure in a landscape by reason of the merely personal satisfaction it affords the beholder was exceptional before the time of the Renaissance. But, though exceptional, an esthetic as distinguished from a religious or transcendental love of nature was by no means wholly lacking. Certainly from the eleventh century onward we find many poems and letters that testify to the existence of a truly pagan enjoyment of scenery. Whether this can be said of the earlier periods is more 65doubtful. Ganzenmüller, whose important study of the feeling for nature in the Middle Ages we are following in this connection, maintains that the term “Carolingian Renaissance” is more or less of a misnomer because under Charlemagne the classical spirit was lacking, even though classical forms of expression were revived; that the classical influence on descriptions of landscape was but rarely felt; and that we find at that time nothing of the subjective and pessimistic attitude of the Roman poets. In short Ganzenmüller concludes that the feeling for nature was altogether Christian.^[286]

However this may be, there is no question that throughout a century or more before the age of the Crusades individuals not only among the laity but even in the monasteries were openly writing poems of earthly love and openly lauding the beauty of natural scenery in more or less the vein of the Romans.^[287] This was but one aspect of the worldly tendency in Church and society which brought about the Cluniac and later movements of reform.

Mathematical Geography

We may pass over the mathematical geography of the Christian period before 1100; no discoveries were made, nor were there any attempts to apply the results of older discoveries. Gerbert, indeed, in his Liber de astrolabio, gives a few details of the division of the earth’s surface into seven climates, details which he had probably derived entirely from Latin authors like Pliny and Martianus Capella.^[288] Though Gerbert owed much to Arabic writers, he did not draw from them the semi-geographical portions of his writings. Certainly in the strict application of mathematical geography to the determination of positions—latitudes and longitudes—nothing was done in the West. Ptolemy was forgotten, and the labors of the Arabs in this field were as yet unknown.

Maps

Though very few maps dating from these centuries are actually in existence, maps were then made in no inconsiderable numbers.^[289] 66Three circumstances convince us of the truth of this statement. In the first place, we find frequent references to lost maps in contemporary literature. Then again, many of the cosmographies and encyclopedic works, such as those of Orosius, Isidore, and the Ravenna geographer, show undeniable indications that they were either compiled from maps or else were accompanied by maps as illustrations. And, finally, most of the examples of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century cartography can only have been derived from older models, some of which in the final analysis may well have been inspired by the cartography of the period of the Roman Empire.^[290]

With a few exceptions^[291] the existing specimens of the cartography of Western Europe dating from before 1100 may be classified as regards form in four more or less well-defined groups, representatives of each of which are also found from the Crusading age and even later. The character of the maps was largely determined by the purposes intended to be served.^[292]

Macrobian Maps

The first group consists of outline diagrams illustrating Macrobius’ division of the earth’s surface into zones and is to be found in manuscripts from as early as the ninth century. This group cannot properly be said to include true maps.^[293]

T-O Maps

The second group is made up of simple representations of the three continents, often called T-O maps (Figs. 1a-1b). On these the known world is shown as a circle within which a T is drawn dividing it into three parts. East is at the top. The upper compartment, that above the crossbar of the T, represents Asia; the two lower compartments, Europe and Africa. The surface is usually unadorned with vignettes or conventional symbols of any sort, and the legends are reduced to a minimum. It seems likely that Augustine had before him such a diagram when he wrote a passage in De civitate dei which describes to perfection the division of the known world as the T-O maps show it, and it may well be that the map which Orosius must have used when 67he wrote the geographical chapter of his history was a modified example of the same type. An extremely large number of T-O maps are to be found in codices dating from the eighth century onward, illustrating the writings of Isidore, Bede, Raban Maur, and others.^[294]

Fig. 1—Types of T-O and Sallust maps. (Figs. 1a and 1b from Santarem, Essai, 1849–1852, atlas, vol. i, pl. 5, figs. 5 and 1; Fig. 1c from Miller, Mappaemundi, vol. iii, 1895, fig. 43.)

Closely akin to the T-O maps, but somewhat more elaborate, are the sketches of the third group (Fig. 1c). These accompany manuscripts of Sallust’s works and may have been drawn to illustrate a passage in Sallust’s De bello Jugurthino describing briefly the countries of the known world. The T-O form is carefully followed, but legends and pictures add a touch of life. The oldest example (tenth century) is strictly classical and fails to show Jerusalem, a stock feature in most medieval maps. Later specimens reveal the influence of the Christian tradition, and upon them Jerusalem figures as an immense church or castle.^[295]

Beatus Maps

The fourth group is by far the most interesting. In the latter part of the eighth century a priest, Beatus, of the Benedictine abbey of Valcavado in northern Spain wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse, destined to become very popular in later times. To demonstrate graphically the division of the world among the twelve apostles, which is spoken of in a passage included in this commentary, either Beatus or one of his contemporaries drew a map. Though the original of this is not now extant, no less than ten subsequent maps for which it served as a model are preserved in manuscripts of the tenth century and later. The researches of Miller^[296] have shown that three of these ten were probably derived from a fairly full and faithful copy of the original, but that the others represent merely a generalized outline. The best example, the so-called St. Sever map, dating from about 1050 and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, displays an immense wealth of detail, legends, vignettes, and pictures of all sorts (Fig. 2).

69

Fig. 2—St. Sever Beatus map. In the original, east is, as here, at the top. The geographical features (e. g. the Mediterranean, the Nile and its delta) may be recognized more readily, however, by viewing the map with north at the top. (From Miller, Mappaemundi, vol. i, 1895, colored reproduction in pocket.)

Limited Geographical Horizon in the Early Middle Ages

In the first chapter, under the heading “The Expansion of Regional Knowledge,” was discussed the expansion of actual knowledge of the earth’s surface, and a careful distinction was made between that section dealing with actual knowledge and the preceding sections of the chapter which had been concerned with theories. We cannot make this distinction in speaking of the regional geographical ideas of the early Christian centuries, for fact and fancy were irrevocably blended. In the Greek and Roman age knowledge of the earth’s surface was widened by exploration, trade, wars, and conquests; but in the early Middle Ages the limits of the accurately known world contracted, and the ocean, Asia, Africa, even Western Europe itself, became domains of legend and fable.

This does not mean that exploration, trade, and conquest did not progress. Commerce in silk flourished in the sixth century between Byzantium and the nations of Central Asia, and much knowledge of those distant countries was thereby acquired in the Greek world.^[297] Between the eighth and the beginning of the twelfth centuries the Northmen had penetrated in their open ships to the innermost recesses of the White Sea^[298] and westward as far as Iceland, Greenland, and the shores of America. Throughout the Middle Ages there was an intermittent flow of pilgrims to and from the Holy Land. At a very early date the Italian cities began to lay the foundations of their great Levantine trade. Why, then, was geographic knowledge not enriched by all this activity? There were many reasons. The spirit of the age turned the scholar’s mind almost exclusively to religious and theological matters. He felt no particular interest in voyages unless they had some religious significance. He cared nothing about the exploits of piratical Norse rovers in subarctic seas or about things that Byzantine traders and diplomats might have seen in the heart of Asia. Even if he could have read the languages in which the stories of these discoveries were written, he probably would not have troubled to investigate them. The 71pilgrim, forcing his way through hardships and privations to the Holy Land, was certainly stirred by no interest in the geography of the lands and seas through which he passed beyond that of finding the best and quickest practicable route. Once arrived in Palestine, he may have felt some slight enthusiasm about studying out the topography of the sacred places. On the whole, however, pilgrim narratives added as little to Western geographical knowledge of the East as American soldiers’ letters during the World War added to our geographical knowledge of France.

Medieval Conception of the Known World

The usual medieval conception of the known world was of a circular or oval area, divided into three continents. Asia occupied the eastern portion and was cut off from Europe by the Tanaïs (Don) and from Africa by the Nile. The Mediterranean, piercing the center of the western section, separated Europe from Africa. The relative size of the continents was variously represented; Asia was usually thought to be much larger than either Europe or Africa. The two latter were believed to be of about the same size.

Paradise

One of the principal Biblical contributions to medieval geography was Paradise with its four rivers.^[299] In the maps of the period, the garden is drawn at the easternmost limits of the world in accordance with the words of Genesis (ii, 8), “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden.”^[300] Martianus Capella, however, by following a Greek tradition which placed the Hyperboreans in a favored and delightful country of the far north, caused certain of the Church Fathers to look northward for Paradise.^[301] Modeling their account of Paradise on the Biblical description and on the ideal landscape of the Roman poets,^[302] the men of the Middle Ages conceived of the garden as a deliciously cool and shady meadow, made beautiful with flowers of many sorts, watered by murmuring streams, and redolent with sweet odors.^[303] Many theories were elaborated concerning the surroundings of the forbidden garden.^[304] In order that men be 72kept out, an impassable barrier must have encircled it. Some believed that this was an immense wall; others, a ring of flames; others, mountains and deserts. Some placed Paradise on an island in the ocean; Cosmas removed it beyond the ocean to the shores of unknown lands in the east; Augustine, Origen, and Philo regarded it as allegorical and not real at all.

Rivers of Paradise

“And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads” (Gen. ii, 10).^[305] These four heads were the sources of the four rivers of Paradise: the Pison, later thought to be either the Indus, the Ganges,^[306] or, sometimes, the Danube; the Gihon, or Nile; the Hiddekel, or Tigris; and, finally, the Euphrates. It was a little difficult for some persons at first sight to understand how all these rivers, whose upper reaches were known in reality to be very far apart, could actually spring from one source.^[307] Many cosmographers were even tempted to place Paradise in Armenia, near the known sources of the Euphrates and Tigris. In general an appeal to the simple theory of the existence of subterranean watercourses sufficed to solve the problem and to explain the otherwise absurd belief that the Nile had its headwaters in the far east beyond the Red Sea.

Asia

Gog and Magog

Asia was frequently made the scene of Paradise and of the creation of man. Here, too, medieval tradition placed Gog and Magog,^[308] whose advent at the Last Day should bring destruction to the world. There are three different Biblical accounts of Gog and Magog. On the basis of Genesis (x, 2), which makes Magog a son of Japhet, a Jewish tradition conceived of this shadowy and fearful personage as the progenitor of the Scythian tribes. In the book of Ezekiel (xxxviii, xxxix) we read the prophecy of the ravages and destructions of “Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal,” who should issue with his terrible hordes from the north and bring death and devastation to the lands of Israel. Finally, in Revelation (xx, 7) we are warned 73that “when the thousand years shall be finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go forth and seduce the nations which are over the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, and shall gather them together to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea.” Here “Gog and Magog” are not the names either of men or of a country, but rather of savage tribes. Most medieval writers, following the Jewish tradition, thought of these tribes as Scythian barbarians of the north—so Josephus, Jerome, and Isidore, though Eusebius believed that they were Kelts, and Jerome referred to a certain history which identified them with the Goths; one chronicle even made the Aquitanians their descendants.^[309]

The apocalyptic story of Gog and Magog spread widely in the Orient as well as through the Christian world. In the East, curiously enough, it was made a part of the Romance of Alexander. We read in the Koran^[310] that the “two-horned Alexander” built a great wall of bronze and pitch and brimstone, behind which he enclosed the wild peoples of Yajūj and Mājūj (Gog and Magog) until they should break forth on the day of the Last Judgment. This story was probably told for the first time in connection with Alexander the Great by Procopius in his De bello Persico.^[311] It formed one of the most important parts of the immensely popular work, the Pseudo-Methodius, which foretold with considerable detail the events of the Last Day.^[312] It entered into later versions of the Romance of Alexander itself, although it formed no part of the versions of the Pseudo-Callisthenes or of the translation of Julius Valerius.^[313]

Romance of Alexander the Great

The Romance of Alexander, one of the most widely known of the various cycles of medieval legend, deserves some comment here because the scene of most of Alexander’s exploits was laid in Asia. The Romance contains some fantastic geographical details concerning the East in general and India in particular. The classical stories of the monsters and marvels of these mysterious lands are here preserved in attractive form. We meet with Amazons and mermaids, griffons, and men who live on the smell 74of spices. We have a text of correspondence between Alexander and the Brahmin king, Dindimus, in which the latter explains to the Macedonian conqueror his religion and the simple habits of the Brahmins.^[314]

St. Thomas in India

India was also supposed in the Middle Ages to have been visited by St. Thomas, the Apostle,^[315] who was said to have built therein a great castle for King Gundophorus. Though little geography is to be gleaned from the apocryphal legends of St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew in India and of St. Matthew in Ethiopia, they served to carry the reader’s mind to distant corners of the earth and are of passing interest to us because certain elements of the story of St. Thomas became part of the fabric of the great twelfth-century legend of Prester John. If we are to believe the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,^[316] an Englishman visited India in the ninth century, for we are told that King Alfred sent a certain Sighelm to the shrines of Saints Thomas and Bartholomew in A. D. 883.

Africa

Africa was utterly neglected. Unlike Asia, it did not become the habitat of legend and fable. Supposedly of small extent and made up mostly of desert, it failed to arouse much interest until long after our period. The universal testimony of cosmographer and cartographer during the entire age under consideration was to the effect that the African continent stops well to the north of the equator at the borders of the sea.

Europe

Europe was of course less a land of romance than Asia, but geographical ideas concerning it were crude enough, as a glance at any contemporary map or at the brief and dry catalogue of facts given in the encyclopedic works will show. Isidore, Orosius, and Bede added little to what classical writers had already said. Local mythology tended to creep into the geographical conceptions of the best-known countries and to blur 75what had been in classical times fairly distinct and clean-cut conceptions.

Explorations to the North

In one quarter, however, to the north, the horizon of geographical knowledge was immensely widened. The inner shores of the Baltic, of which the Romans and early Christians had known next to nothing, became from the eighth century familiar ground to the Northmen. Furthermore, the widespread rovings of these adventurous seamen carried them not only westward and southward to harry Britain, France, and Spain and to penetrate into the Mediterranean but also northward along the long stretch of Norwegian coast. Alfred the Great appended to his translation of Orosius an account of the journey in 890 of Othere of Halogaland around the North Cape and into the White Sea even as far as the shores of Biarma Land (near modern Archangel; the word “Biarma” is said to be related to the Russian “Perm”). In later years Norse expeditions visited the remote coasts of Finnmark and Biarma, seeking trade and carrying war and destruction.^[317]

The Atlantic

The maritime wanderings of the early Irish and their successors, the Northmen, gave rise to a circle of legends regarding fabulous islands in the Atlantic and fabulous voyages among them. The poetic imagination of both Kelt and Viking contributed marvelously to the growth of these tales. Great and often misguided ingenuity has been shown in modern times in attempts to find the seeds of truth from which these stories may or may not have sprung.^[318] The most famous legend and the one destined to exert the strongest influence on the imagination of the future told of St. Brandan’s journeyings among enchanted isles and fantastic seas to the west and northwest of Ireland. Actual discovery in these quarters is recorded in the pages of the ninth-century Dicuil, who narrates the finding of Thule by Irish priests some thirty years before his time (825 A. D.) and describes the cold of those regions and the long twilights at the time of the summer solstice, when one day merges into the next.^[319] 76The Northmen reached Iceland in 860 and settled there a few years later; Greenland was discovered by them in 877, though it was not colonized until the close of the following century.

America Reached by the Norsemen

Icelandic rovers also reached America in the latter years of the tenth century.^[320] The Landnámabók, compiled from an original version written about 1200, tells how, about the year 983, Ari Marsson “was driven out of his course at sea to White-men’s-land (Hvitramanna-land), which is called by some persons Ireland the Great (Irland-it-mikla); it lies westward in the sea near Wineland the Good; it is said to be a sail of six doegr west of Ireland” (Reeves’s translation).^[321] Though we may not be certain whether this brief passage is rightly to be interpreted as referring to America, it is undeniable that soon after Ari Marsson’s discovery the northeastern shores of our continent were visited by Biarni, the son of Heriulf, and by Leif, the son of Eric the Red, and that the latter were followed by Thorfinn Karlsefni and others.^[322] Sailing southwestward, these adventurers came to the shores of a barren country of flat stones which they called Helluland; thence they coasted southward past the forested Markland and past long beaches and sand reefs, until they reached Wineland, with grapevines, a mild climate, and savage inhabitants (or Skraellings). From some of the latter, captured by Karlsefni in Markland, the Icelanders learned that “kings governed the Skraellings” and that “there was a land on the other side over against their country which was inhabited by people who wore white garments and yelled loudly and carried poles before them to which rags were attached” (Reeves’s translation). This land they identified with White-men’s-land, or Ireland the Great.

There is no necessity here of giving a general review of the very broad field of Arabic geography. The works of the foremost Mohammedan geographers, Al-Masʿūdī, Ibn Ḥauqal, Al-Iṣṭakhrī, were unknown in Europe during the Middle Ages, and formal Arabic geography certainly contributed next to nothing to the knowledge of the earth possessed by the Occidentals of the Crusading age.

Other branches of Arabic science, however, profoundly influenced the development of European thought at this time. As transmitters of classical learning to the West, the Saracens reintroduced fragments of the geographical lore of the Greeks. The two classical authors in whom they had taken the deepest interest were Aristotle and Ptolemy. Their most important contribution to Western geographical knowledge was to make known to the West geographical speculations in the works of these men and in the various treatises which the Moslem writers themselves had composed under Peripatetic and Ptolemaic influences.

Influence of Aristotle

Aristotle held a position of preëminent authority among the Moslems in all matters scientific. Arabic scholars had received his writings both through Syriac translations and direct from Greek texts. Vast commentaries on his works were made by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980–1037 A. D.) in the Eastern Caliphate and by Averroës (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198 A. D.) in Spain. Aristotelian astronomy, as distinguished from Ptolemaic, was reproduced with modifications in the work On the Sphere of Al-Biṭrūjī of Cordova, known to the Christians as Alpetragius.^[323] By the end of the twelfth century, owing to the rising interest in 78Aristotelianism in Europe (the “flood of Aristotelianism,” as Duhem calls it), translations had been done from the Arabic into Latin of a large number of Aristotelian works on astronomy, physics, meteorology, and many other subjects.^[324] It was in these works that most of Aristotle’s thought and observation in geography had found expression. Aristotelian physical geography, transmitted through these channels, was destined to dominate the geographical speculations of many Christian writers of the thirteenth century.

Influence of Ptolemy’s “Almagest”

The Moslems of the Eastern Caliphate also had become familiar with Ptolemy’s Almagest and Geography through Syriac translations and through versions of the original Greek text.^[325] A manuscript of the Kitāb al-Majisṭī, or Almagest, was translated into Arabic in the days of Hārūn ar-Rashīd by that caliph’s vizier, Yaḥyā, and other translations appeared during the middle part of the ninth century. Study of the Almagest stimulated Arabic scholars and incited them to write such original treatises of their own as Al-Farghānī’s (Alfraganus’) On the Elements of Astronomy, Al-Battānī’s On the Movements of the Stars, or Astronomy,^[326] and Ibn Yūnūs’ Ḥakīmī Tables.

Influence of Ptolemy’s “Geography”

Furthermore, Ptolemy’s Geography was certainly known to the Moslems in Syriac translations and probably also in copies of the original Greek text.^[327] With the Geography as a model a number of Arabic treatises, usually entitled Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, or Book of the Description of the Earth, were composed at an early period of Islam and served as bases on which later geographical writers built more complex systems. One of the most significant was the Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ of Al-Khwārizmī, composed about the time of Al-Maʾmūn (813–833 A. D.), the full text of which was discovered forty-four years ago by Spitta.^[328] From another book of the same sort and title Al-Battānī derived the geographical details included in his Astronomy.^[329] The latter was translated 79into Latin during the twelfth century; and Al-Khwārizmī’s work was known in Europe at second hand.^[330]

Az-Zarqalī and the “Toledo Tables”

Ptolemy was studied in the western as well as in the eastern centers of Islam. Toledo, notwithstanding its conquest by the kings of Castile in 1085, long remained a scientific center, where the Arabic spirit of investigation lingered on among Jew, Christian, and Moor. It was largely through Spanish channels that the Latin West found its Oriental inspiration in astronomy and astrology.^[331] About 1080 Az-Zarqalī, of Toledo,^[332] who had devised a new type of astrolabe, wrote various works on astronomical subjects, including a commentary on a series of astronomical tables that had been constructed by a group of Jewish and Moslem scholars before his time.^[333] These so-called Toledo Tables, with Az-Zarqalī’s Canons explaining them, contained some incidental geographical information derived in part from Ptolemy’s Geography and from Al-Khwārizmī.^[334] They were rendered into Latin in the twelfth century by the famous Gerard of Cremona, who probably found in Spain most of the manuscripts from which he made his many Latin translations.^[335]

Geography in Sicily

Ptolemy’s Geography was also studied in Sicily under the Moslem emirs and their successors, the Norman kings. From the eleventh century date several Arabic descriptions of Sicily now known only in fragments but bearing eloquent witness to a true enthusiasm for geography prevalent among the Moslem aristocracy of the island.^[336] The Normans, who became masters of Sicily between 1060 and 1071, preserved much that was best of Arabic traditions and culture, and Moslem scholars played a brilliant part in the intellectual life of the court. Roger II himself was a devotee of geography, occupying much of his spare time in collecting Arabic geographical treatises and in questioning travelers about distant parts of the earth. “He gave himself up to this work tirelessly for fifteen years, never ceasing to examine personally into all geographical questions, to search for their 80solution and to verify facts, in order that he might obtain in complete form all the information that he desired” (from Jaubert’s translation of Edrisi).^[337]

Edrisi

At Roger’s instigation and with his aid Al-Idrīsī, or Edrisi (as the name is more usually written), who had come to the Sicilian court from Spain, undertook a great series of geographical labors. Little is known of the life of Edrisi besides a few details to be gleaned from later biographers^[338] and what he himself tells us in the preface to his Geography, as it is usually known, or, to cite its Arabic title, The Recreation for Him Who Wishes to Travel Through the Countries, which was completed in 1154 or later.^[339] We know that he constructed for Roger a celestial sphere and a disk-shaped map of the world, both of silver. Furthermore, we are told that Roger provided him with special facilities for the construction of maps and for the compilation of his great treatise. It appears that the king and Edrisi together selected “certain intelligent men, who were despatched on travels and were accompanied by draftsmen. Just as soon as these men returned Edrisi inserted in his treatise the information which was thus communicated to him.” On the basis of observations made in the field, data derived from Ptolemy and earlier Arabic geographers were correlated and brought up to date. The book and the maps which were drawn to elucidate the book are for this reason unquestionably among the most interesting monuments of Arabic geography; furthermore, the book is the most voluminous and detailed geographical work written in twelfth-century Europe. After a very brief description of the earth as a globe, the hemispheres, climates, seas, and gulfs, Edrisi launches into a long and minute account of the regions of the earth’s surface. He takes up the seven climates in order, dividing each climate into ten sections, an arrangement that is artificial to excess. None the less, Edrisi’s works are of exceptional quality when considered in comparison with other geographical writings of their period, partly by reason of their richness of detail but mainly because of the scientific method used, the coöperative employment of many 81observers, and the critical correlation of their observations—a procedure which was indeed unlike that adopted by Latin scholars of the time.

Influence of Sicilo-Moslem Geography

The question of the full extent to which the fruits of this Sicilian geographical school became known in the Latin Europe of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is a matter that awaits further investigation.

Certainly the influence of Edrisi’s Geography could not have been great in the world of letters or else traces of it would more easily be detected in Western literature. Unlike a multitude of Arabic writings of far less intrinsic value, the Rogerian Description (as the Geography of Edrisi is often called) found no Gerard of Cremona to put it into Latin, and the authoritative geographical knowledge of the Western world was destined to develop unenriched by the treasures which Roger and Edrisi together had amassed.

On the other hand, there is no question but that the Sicilo-Norman enthusiasm for geography exerted an indirect influence on the evolution of geographical knowledge, an influence that was to make itself felt more especially after the close of our period. This enthusiasm for geography was the product of a mingling of Arabic scientific and scholarly traditions with Norman maritime enterprise in an island which occupied a central position in relation to the world of its day. It was an enthusiasm that arose partly from pure love of knowledge but also in very large degree from the practical necessities of a sea-faring people, and it was early applied to the solution of the problems of navigation. In the words of De La Roncière, “The use of coast charts was destined to become general in Sicily; a rational method of navigation to be substituted for the routine of pilotage, and thus the way was prepared for the progressive conquest of the world.”^[340] As De La Roncière goes on to point out, the Genoese learned the arts of navigation from the Sicilians in the early thirteenth century and transmitted them subsequently to the Spaniards, Portuguese, French, and English; and a new science 82of the sea was developed upon the foundations originally laid by Sicilian Moslems and Normans.^[341]

Oriental Ideas Transmitted to the West

Besides the classical heritage, the Moslems also transmitted some peculiarly Oriental ideas to the West. Al-Khwārizmī was the author of a treatise with astronomical tables, the translation of which by Adelard of Bath usually goes under the name of Khorazmian Tables.^[342] The original work was a redaction of a book drawn ultimately from Hindu sources and known as the Little Sindhind.^[343] Thus it was from Hindu sources, as is shown by this work, that the Mohammedans got their idea of the world center of Arin. Hindu religion, furthermore, contributed something toward the molding of Greek and Moslem doctrines of the periodicity of the universe and of the Great Year—doctrines which became widely known in the West through Hermann the Dalmatian’s Latin translation of the Persian Abū Maʿshar’s book, The Great Book of the Introduction, entitled in the Latin, Liber introductorius in astrologiam.^[344] Hindu influences were also felt in an anonymous but widely read Arabic treatise falsely attributed to Aristotle in the Middle Ages and called Liber de proprietatibus elementorum.^[345]

Turning now from the sources to the material substance of the contribution of the Moslems, we find that, except in so far as it brought a knowledge of Aristotle to Europe, it added little to Western notions either of physical or of regional geography. Though the Moslems entirely failed to share with the Western World their wide practical acquaintance with lands and seas, the Arabic writers did nevertheless introduce some new ideas in the fields of astronomical—or, better, astrological—geography and in the closely allied study of tidal phenomena.

The Great Years

The theory of the Great Years was very popular among the Orientals, possibly because it appealed to their fatalistic spirit. 83Arabic astronomers adopted Ptolemy’s calculation of the length of the Great Year at 36,000 terrestrial years^[346] and seem to have believed that after every complete revolution of the sphere of the fixed stars, the planets, as well as the fixed stars, will find themselves in the same relative positions that they held at the beginning of the revolution.^[347] The Arabic work on this subject most read in the Latin West was Hermann the Dalmatian’s translation of Abū Maʿshar’s book, in which it was explained that astral influences—especially the perpetual circulation of the fixed stars—are the cause of everything which is born and dies and of everything which occurs between birth and death on this earth.

Cosmic Cycles and Geographical Changes

In much the same way that the Chaldeans, Hindus, and Greeks had done, the Moslems worked out a theory of the supposed influence of these cosmic cycles on geography.^[348] The most striking elaboration of the theory was made by the “Brothers of Piety and Sincerity,” who formed a philosophical school in the tenth century after Christ. In the great encyclopedic work^[349] produced by this school (which, incidentally, contains many other interesting speculations on the subject of physical geography) gradual alterations in the relative position of land and sea are ascribed to almost imperceptible changes in the longitude of the fixed stars resulting from the precession of the equinoxes. Not only do lands and seas change places, but various types of terrain; in the course of time “cultivated land becomes desert, desert becomes cultivated land, steppes become seas, and seas become steppes or mountains.”^[350]

Whereas this curious theory was accepted by the Aristotelian Al-Biṭrūjī, the author of the pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de proprietatibus elementorum vigorously opposed to it the following argument.^[351] If the fixed stars revolve around the earth in 36,000 years, the land ought to revolve around the 34,000 miles which he believed make the circumference of the earth in the same time, or, as we may infer, at a rate of slightly less than a mile per year. We should therefore expect to find certain cities much nearer the coast and other cities farther from the coast than they 84used to be. The anonymous author says that if the theory were valid one ought to be able to observe great changes in the position of such places as Arin, Ceylon, Byzantium, and Rome in relation to the sea. But since, as a matter of fact, no such changes are apparent, the whole theory of the transposition of land and sea falls to the ground.

Obvious as it may seem to us, this reasoning is remarkable at a time when actual observation as a foundation for, or check on, theorizing was rare indeed; and hence it is gratifying to note that the Liber de proprietatibus elementorum with its argument against the Great Year, rather than the encyclopedia of the “Brothers of Piety and Sincerity” with its argument for it, was the work on this subject that was read by Occidental scholars.

Theories of the Tides

The Moslems did not add much to the classical theories of the tides which they transmitted to Christendom. Their fundamental work concerning tides was that treatise of Abū Maʿshar which we have already mentioned, a work from which, as Duhem says, all the Middle Ages learned the laws of the ebb and flood.^[352] Here, in the chapters on the moon,^[353] a full description is given of the various characteristics of the tides together with copious speculations regarding their causes. The actual observations of fact were exact and careful. Abū Maʿshar explains with not a little accuracy the relation of the tides to the moon’s rising and setting, to her phases, and to the position of the sun; he understood that winds might cause exceptionally high water; he recognized the influences of local topographic features, that some seas display different tidal phenomena from others and that the flood waters may be retained by reefs, or valleys, or deep bays. On the other hand, Abū Maʿshar’s treatment of the causes of the tides was less successful. Though he believed firmly that the moon produces the ebb and flood, he failed to account for the presence of the high tide at the time of the moon’s opposition. His explanation of the moon’s attraction of the waters was in keeping with astrological methods of reasoning. Our satellite was supposed by astrologers to be of peculiarly aqueous nature 85and for that reason exceptionally capable of governing the movements of the liquid element of the earth.

Other theories of the tides entered the West from Arabic sources. Al-Biṭrūjī’s On the Sphere ascribed their origin not to the moon but to the general circulation of the heavens.^[354] Averroës, in a commentary on the Meteorology of Aristotle, devoted a confused chapter^[355] to an attempt at showing that ebb and flood are the results partly of currents produced by differences in level between the ocean and certain seas and partly of the moon’s attraction of the waters. The possibility of differences in level between seas and ocean had probably become known to the Spanish scholar through some garbled rendering of Eratosthenes’ observations on the currents and levels of the Mediterranean.^[356]

Measurement of a Terrestrial Degree

That the Saracens also were interested in the more strictly mathematical aspects of astronomical geography is emphatically proved by the fact that they undertook actually to measure the length of a terrestrial degree^[357] and thereby to determine the circumference of the earth. Some knowledge of this great work came to the Western world in our period through translations of the Astronomy of Al-Farghānī.^[358]

Geographical Positions

The Arabic investigations, however, which most profoundly interested the men of the West were those concerned with the determination of the location of places on the earth’s surface rather than those whose aim was to find the size of the globe. Stimulated by their interest in Ptolemy, the Moslems felt a special need for the accurate knowledge of positions, for upon such knowledge depended the construction of mosques, which, according to religious law, must face in the direction of Mecca. Astrology also necessitated this type of investigation. In order to cast a horoscope one must know what stars are overhead at a particular moment; and, to ascertain this, one must know latitude and longitude. In the Arabic astronomic works there 86occur rules for determining positions and tables of the latitudes and longitudes of places throughout the world.^[359]

One of the most practical results of Arabic investigations in this field was a reduction of Ptolemy’s exaggerated estimate of the length of the Mediterranean Sea. The Greek geographer gave the length as 62° or about half again too long. Al-Khwārizmī cut this figure down to about 52°, and, if we are right in our interpretation of the available data, Az-Zarqalī still further reduced it to approximately the correct figure, 42°. As we shall see in a later chapter, the results of these corrections became known in the medieval West.^[360]

The Moslems, as a general rule, measured longitudes from the prime meridian which Ptolemy had used, that of the Fortunate Islands (now the Canaries), situated in the Western Ocean at the westernmost limit of the habitable earth; but individual writers came to make use of another meridian farther west, a meridian destined to become known to the Christian world as that of the True West as distinguished from the supposed border of the habitable West.^[361] Abū Maʿshar, on the other hand, referred his prime meridian to a fabulous castle of Kang-Diz, far to the east in the China Sea.^[362]

Arin

The western prime meridian was commonly supposed to be 90° from a mythical city called Arin (or Arim) situated on the equator, halfway between the farthest east and the farthest west. This city was said to have neither latitude nor longitude, and its meridian came arbitrarily to be placed at 10° east of that of Baghdad. The idea of Arin probably originated among the Hindus,^[363] who believed that the city of Langka in Ceylon (or perhaps Sumatra)—the abode of devils—lies on the equator. They traced their prime meridian from Langka through Odjein, a place in India, to Mount Meru at the north pole—the abode of angels. Odjein was transliterated into Arabic as “Arin” or “Arim” and was shifted by the Moslems to the equator. It was made known to the Christian world through such works as Adelard of Bath’s translation of the Khorazmian Tables (which, as 87we have already seen, was an Arabic redaction of a Hindu work) and Plato of Tivoli’s translation of Al-Battānī’s Astronomy. In the latter, Arin was represented as a cupola or tower; and on Christian maps and diagrams of the Middle Ages it was not infrequently so depicted.

This sums up briefly a few of the more significant original ideas that the Moslems added to twelfth-century geographical knowledge in the West. By way of contrast, it is not out of place briefly to recall what they had actually accomplished in the field of geographical investigation.^[364] Moslem trade between the seventh and ninth centuries reached China by sea and by land; southward it tapped the more distant coasts of Africa, including Zanzibar; northward it penetrated Russia;^[365] westward Mohammedan navigators saw the unknown and dreaded waters of the Atlantic. Al-Masʿūdī speaks of the presence of Moslem traders in the heart of Europe, in a country to which he gave the name Ad-Dir (probably Bohemia).^[366] Arabic literature abounds with descriptions of the lands within these wide borders; of their products and kingdoms and marvels, true and fanciful. But all this was destined to remain a sealed book to the man of the Latin Occident,^[367] who as a rule felt little genuine interest in the world beyond his immediate ken. He looked to Arabic books for practical aid in making calendars and star tables and horoscopes; he looked to Arabic translations and commentaries on Aristotle for help toward a better understanding of the dark and hidden meaning in the words of Scripture. The geographical knowledge which he acquired from the Moslems during our period was merely incidental to other interests, a sort of flotsam borne in on the great wave of astrologic and Aristotelian lore sweeping into Europe at this time.

To gain anything approaching complete understanding of the status of the geographical lore in Western Europe during the Crusading period, one would be obliged to undertake the colossal task of ransacking practically all the available literature of this age. From an examination of selected specimens of various types of document, however, we may arrive at a fairly correct conception of the kind of geographical thought and information that was current. Certainly our view of the subject would not be materially modified by the further accumulation of illustrative examples. We must, none the less, look to a large variety of sources: to the writings of theologians, philosophers, historians, chroniclers, and topographers; to maps, poetry, romances, and even to works of art. These show us what the sedentary man of the Middle Ages could learn of geography through reading and study. Pilgrim narratives, letters, commercial and diplomatic treaties, and many other miscellaneous documents throw light upon the actual extent of travel during this century and a half.

Writers of the Middle Ages did not specialize as we do at the present day. They treated subjects of the most diverse nature within the pages of the same book. We shall group their productions into a few broad categories: philosophical and theological writings that were read for the most part by the scholar and churchman; translations from Arabic scientific treatises and other works written under Arabic influence; encyclopedic compilations or attempts to encompass the whole range of human learning, also for the scholar, and popularizations of these in prose and verse for the intelligent layman; histories and chronicles; pilgrim narratives and other records of travel; topographical works; and, finally, maps.

Other more instructive classifications might well be made. 89One in which the works were grouped according to the type of thought of which each is the expression might bring out the conflicting intellectual crosscurrents of the age. In such a classification the great differentiation could be emphasized between writers bound by respect for authority and writers of originality and independence; between those who interpreted the words of Scripture literally, those who interpreted them allegorically, and those who went so far as to neglect or to doubt them. The classification which follows, based upon the purposes which the various groups of writings were intended to serve, is merely one of convenience.

The distinction between theology, philosophy, and the physical and natural sciences was not sharply drawn during the earlier Middle Ages. Only after the ninth century did the tendency to mark off theology and philosophy as separate spheres of thought become gradually evident,^[368] and it remained for a much later age to set off the physical and natural sciences from philosophy.

Theological Works

Though not much geography is found in the strictly theological writings of our period, those portions of them which deal with the Creation embody cosmogonic and cosmographic speculations which have a geographic character for reasons that have already been explained.^[369] Many of the philosophical writings, on the other hand, are rich in passages of geographical interest; for the physical geography, like the natural history, of the Middle Ages was the province of the philosopher.

Peter Abelard

Among the outstanding theologians of the twelfth century was Peter Abelard (1079–1142), whose tragic history is well remembered. In his Expositio in hexaemeron, Sermones, and more famous Sic et non we find a few scattered observations of a geographical character. Though Abelard’s fame rests upon the keenness of his reasoning and the destructive brilliance of his 90dialectic, his position when dealing with the Works of the Six Days was that of mystic.^[370] We shall have occasion to see how the geographical passages from his works reveal a love of elaborate allegory.

Hugh of St. Victor

The monastic school of St. Victor in Paris was preëminently a center of twelfth-century mysticism.^[371] A leading figure here was Hugh of St. Victor, who held the direction of studies after about the year 1125 and who enjoyed during his lifetime (he died in 1141) a great reputation for learning in things divine.^[372] Among Hugh’s writings we find Adnotationes elucidatoriae in Pentateuchon, containing speculations on the Creation, and the curious treatises De arca Noë mystica, De arca Noë morali, and De vanitate mundi,^[373] which display a love of symbolism and include the exposition of a strange theory of the westward course of the tide of civilization.^[374]

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard (1098–1179 or 1180), abbess of a Benedictine convent near Bingen on the Rhine, was another lover of the symbolic. Her mystic exaltation took the form of visions in which were revealed to her the secrets of the universe. With the knowledge thereby attained she served her fellow man as a prophetess and healer of disease. Besides a series of letters, she wrote three works recording her visions: Scivias sive visionum ac revelationum libri tres (1141–1150), Liber vitae meritorum (1158–1162), and Liber divinorum operum simplicis hominis (1163–1170). She was also probably the author of two treatises, Subtilitates diversarum naturarum creaturarum and Causae et curae, which, though not avowedly the record of visions, could hardly have been written except as the result of some form of religious experience.^[375] Her “cosmology and physiology,” as Thorndike points out, were none the less in essential conformity with “the then prevalent theories of natural science” although she “displays no little originality in giving a new turn to the familiar concepts.” She does not, however, “evolve any really new principles of nature.”^[376]

To turn from the imaginative and visionary writings of Hugh and Hildegard to the more coldly intellectual theology and philosophy of the age, we find in the Sic et non of Abelard the first example of a new method of handling philosophical and theological questions. This so-called didactic method was destined to find its culminating expression in the mighty volumes of Thomas Aquinas. Its essence was to incite discussion by placing in juxtaposition divergent and contradictory Scriptural and patristic texts on the same subject. Abelard did this in the Sic et non without giving interpretations of his own. Peter Lombard (died 1164), who in his Sententiae followed Abelard’s method, usually gave in addition his own views on a subject, though not infrequently the reader was left faced by two or more conflicting theories. It might almost be said that the Sententiae served to standardize the orthodox doctrine of the age. Shortly after Peter Lombard’s death Peter Comestor (the “eater”), at one time dean of the cathedral church in Troyes and lecturer in Paris, produced an extensive treatise entitled Historia scholastica. This compilation of commentaries on Scripture enjoyed an immense popularity at a later period, especially towards the close of the thirteenth century.^[377] Comestor, like Peter Lombard, represented the more orthodox point of view.

The School of Chartres: Its Intellectual Independence

Unusual intellectual independence was displayed during the twelfth century by the philosophical writers of the school of Chartres^[378] and by those who came under their influence. Well known early in the eleventh century, this cathedral school had acquired, in the first half of the twelfth, a European reputation, founded on the boldness and originality of its masters and on the widespread influence which they exerted through their pupils and associates.

Bernard and Theodoric of Chartres

Two brothers stand out preëminently among them, Bernard and Theodoric (or Thierry). Very little in detail is known 92about the life of either. Bernard was probably born late in the eleventh century and was chancellor between 1124 and 1126.^[379] He enjoyed an immense reputation and was called by John of Salisbury the most perfect Platonist of his century.^[380] It seems likely that he died before 1130 and was not the same man as Bernard Sylvester of Tours, with whom he has often been confused.^[381]

We know even less of Theodoric, who enjoyed a contemporary fame as great as, if not even greater than, that of his brother. Theodoric was mentioned by a disciple as the foremost philosopher of the whole of Europe.^[382] Master of the school (magister scholae) in Chartres in 1121, the successor to Gilbert de la Porrée as chancellor in 1141, he produced a large work on the seven liberal arts (the Heptateuchon) and a treatise describing the Creation.^[383] The latter, entitled De sex dierum operibus, was in many respects unique, representing a remarkably rationalistic discussion of a subject in the treatment of which any display of reason or independence almost inevitably was deemed heresy.^[384]

Adelard of Bath; Hermann the Dalmatian; Robert of Retines

Bernard and Theodoric maintained scholarly connections throughout Western Europe and counted many famous men among their disciples. The Englishman Adelard of Bath^[385] belongs to their broader circle, for it is likely that he was acquainted with the Chartres scholars, at least by reputation, and his important work, Quaestiones naturales^[386] (dating from between 1107 and 1142), shows that he held many ideas in common with the most famous of Bernard’s pupils, William of Conches. In his wide travels^[387] and in his translations from the Arabic^[388] Adelard exemplifies another phase of the awakening intellectual life of the age, a turning to Moslem literature for new sources of information and inspiration beyond the standard and easily available collections of classical, Scriptural, and patristic authorities.

Among the disciples of Theodoric may also be counted the travelers and translators from the Arabic, Hermann the Dalmatian (or Hermann the Carinthian) and Robert of Retines, to whose translations we shall later have occasion to refer.^[389]

Very closely akin in spirit with the scholars of Chartres was Bernard Sylvester, who taught at Tours in the fifth decade of the twelfth century.^[390] It has long been a moot point whether or not Bernard Sylvester was the same as Bernard of Chartres. There are very potent arguments in favor of identifying them, among the most convincing being the remarkable manner in which the philosophy of the De mundi universitate (or Cosmographia turonense),^[391] written by Bernard Sylvester between 1145 and 1148, gives expression to theories which John of Salisbury ascribes to Bernard of Chartres. Yet, despite these extraordinary similarities, the weight of evidence seems opposed to the theory that the two names refer to the same man.^[392] In any case, if Bernard Sylvester was not the brother of Theodoric of Chartres, he was acquainted with Theodoric and with the latter’s work, for it was to Theodoric that he dedicated the De mundi universitate.

William of Conches

Another member of the Chartres group, William of Conches, was a disciple of Bernard of Chartres in his youth. He taught at Chartres probably as early as 1126. Between 1140 and 1150 he acted as tutor to the young Henry and Geoffrey Plantagenet.^[393] Hauréau says that William believed that “la philosophie tient subordonnées à ses principes généraux, comme deux sciences subalternes, la théologie et la physique.”^[394] His most significant book, the De philosophia mundi,^[395] throughout exemplifies this attitude and reveals to us a mind deeply interested in physics and natural science for their own sakes and a desire to explain the phenomena of the universe according to natural and observable laws. The rationalism of his philosophy brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities and necessitated his retracting various opinions late in life.^[396] He died either in 1150 or 1154.

Alexander Neckam

The scholars of the Chartres group formed the intellectual élite of their age. More in keeping with the normal habit of the 94period than their mode of thought was the manner in which the Englishman Alexander Neckam dealt with matters of natural science. Born in 1157, Neckam had become a professor at the University of Paris by 1180; later in life he returned to England, became abbot of Cirencester in 1213, and died in 1217.^[397] His principal works were De naturis rerum, in prose, and a verse paraphrase and enlargement of it entitled Laus sapiencie divine, or De laudibus divinae sapientiae.^[398] In these works we see that Neckam, though inspired by a lively curiosity and even by some degree of understanding of experimental and observational science, was on the whole less original and less courageous intellectually than either Theodoric of Chartres or William of Conches. Instead of trying to explain rationally the phenomena of nature as these earlier writers had done, he was nearly always content merely to describe these phenomena as facts and to draw lengthy moral lessons from them.

These are merely a few characteristic representatives of the host of theologians and philosophers of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Their works serve to illustrate widely diverse tendencies of thought: the heretical independence of the scholars of Chartres as contrasted with the mysticism of Hugh of St. Victor, the orthodoxy of Peter Lombard and Peter Comestor, and the cautious inquisitiveness of Alexander Neckam. Though these men differed in mental caliber, their learning was based almost exclusively on the Latin writings of classical and earlier Christian authors, and most of their geographical knowledge was borrowed from the sources we have discussed in Chapters I and II. But our period was also memorable by reason of the influx of a new body of learning destined to bring about profound modifications in the methods of European scholarship and to add materially to the sum total of European knowledge. This new body of learning was made available through translations from the Arabic.

The enthusiasm for the work of translation which prevailed during our period foreshadowed a far broader enthusiasm of the same sort that marked the great age of the Renaissance. Only a relatively few scholars, however, were familiar with Greek; and the number of direct translations from the Greek was limited.^[399] The men of the Crusading age received the results of Greek scientific investigation primarily through the medium of the Moslems.

We saw in Chapter III how the Moslems had translated certain works of Aristotle, of Ptolemy, and of the Hindus and had themselves composed sundry treatises under Peripatetic, Ptolemaic, and Hindu influences. Many of these Arabic translations, in turn, were converted into Latin by Occidental scholars of our period.^[400]

Western interest in Moslem science centered at first on the translation of astronomical and mathematical treatises and somewhat later on Arabic versions of Aristotle. Indirectly through both of these channels important geographical conceptions gained currency in Europe.

Adelard of Bath; Peter Alphonsi

Among the early translators of astronomical and mathematical treatises was Adelard of Bath, whose connections with the school of Chartres we have already mentioned. Through Adelard’s Latin version of the so-called Khorazmian Tables^[401] of Al-Khwārizmī, made in the year 1126,^[402] knowledge of the Hindu conception of a world center, Arin, was introduced into Europe. The Khorazmian Tables had found their way to Spain by the beginning of the eleventh century and were there adapted from the era of Yezdegerd to that of the Hejira by a certain Maslama al-Majrīṭi of Madrid.^[403] In addition to Adelard’s version of Maslama’s work, there is reason to believe that the Khorazmian Tables were also put into Latin by Hermann the Dalmatian.^[404]

96A contemporary of Adelard of Bath was the Jew, Peter Alphonsi^[405] (or Petrus Anfusi), who was baptized in 1106 at the age of forty-five and subsequently became an ardent devotee of Christianity. His Dialogus cum Judeo contains references to Arin and a few significant observations on astronomical geography.

John of Seville; Plato of Tivoli

In 1135 John of Seville (also known as Johannes Hispanensis, or John of Luna) translated Al-Farghānī’s On the Elements of Astronomy,^[406] a work from which John of Holywood borrowed much of the materials that he incorporated into his De sphaera and which thereby was fated to produce a profound effect on the future development of astronomical geography during the later Middle Ages. Gerard of Cremona also translated the same work.^[407]

From about 1140 dates Plato of Tivoli’s version of the Astronomy of Al-Battānī,^[408] a close rendering into Latin of Al-Battānī’s chapters on the theory of astronomy but not of the astronomical and geographical tables that followed in the original Arabic. Our interest in the chapters lies in the fact that they contain (Chapter 6) a brief general description of the inhabited earth widely differing from those found in contemporary Latin geographical works.

“Marseilles Tables” and “Toledo Tables”

Preserved in a twelfth-century manuscript of the Bibliothèque Nationale is a set of astronomical tables for Marseilles dating from 1140, the work of a certain Raymond of Marseilles.^[409] The Canons, or introductory explanation, of these tables are drawn largely from the astronomical Canons of Az-Zarqalī;^[410] the tables are an adaptation for the meridian of Marseilles of the Toledo Tables. Both Az-Zarqalī’s Canons and the Toledo Tables, with their modifications like the Marseilles set, contained not a little incidental material of importance from the point of view of astronomical geography, including a list of cities with their latitudes and longitudes derived ultimately from Al-Khwārizmī.^[411] That this material enjoyed wide popularity during our period 97and later is proved by the existence of a large number of manuscripts.^[412] One of the translations of Az-Zarqualī’s Canons was done by the hand of the famous Gerard of Cremona, as we have already seen in Chapter III.^[413]

Robert of Retines; Hermann the Dalmatian; Daniel of Morley

It is almost certain that before 1143 the Astronomy of Al-Battānī was again put into Latin, this time by Robert of Retines^[414] (or Robert of Chester). We do not, as in the case of Plato of Tivoli’s version, possess the text of this translation, though we have what was probably Robert’s adaptation to the meridian of London of Al-Battānī’s and Az-Zarqalī’s astronomical tables. This adaptation, for 1149–1150, forms a continuation of tables for the meridian of Toledo in 1149.^[415] Furthermore, Al-Battānī is cited, and some of the geographical ideas expressed in his Astronomy are reflected, in the as yet unpublished Liber de essentiis of Hermann the Dalmatian, who was a close associate of Robert and a student of Theodoric of Chartres. The Liber de essentiis was written at Béziers in 1143.^[416] Robert also adapted Adelard’s Khorazmian Tables to the meridian of London.^[417] Another Englishman, Roger of Hereford, was probably the maker of tables for the meridian of Toledo and certainly of a series for Hereford dating from 1178, based on tables for Toledo and Marseilles.^[418] Towards the end of the century, still another Englishman, Daniel of Morley, journeyed to Spain in search of Arabic astronomical lore. Here, at Toledo, he came in contact with Gerard of Cremona. On his return to England he took with him “a precious multitude of books” and, “to explain the teaching of Toledo to Bishop John of Norwich” (1175–1200),^[419] wrote a work called De philosophia, or Liber de naturis inferiorum et superiorum, the astronomy of which, as in the case of John of Holywood’s De sphaera, was mainly based on the writings of Al-Farghānī.

Gerard of Cremona; John of Holywood (Sacrobosco)

At about the same time, Gerard of Cremona produced a short independent treatise, the Theorica planetarum,^[420] which became a 98stock text from which later writers borrowed extensively. This is merely a summary of the Almagest, produced apparently before Gerard made his famous translation of that great work in 1175,^[421] and is of interest to us because it contains an account of methods of transposing astronomical tables to different longitudes. It had certainly been read by the author of the London tables of 1232,^[422] a set which, in addition to being of astronomical value, contains a few incidental notes of geographic importance.

The De sphaera^[423] of John of Holywood (also known as John of Halifax, or John Sacrobosco), dating from the very end of our period, includes citations from Al-Farghānī’s Astronomy as well as from classical authors and was the most influential work in the field of astronomical geography of its century, though the intrinsic value of its contents was not great.

Aristotelianism Introduced Through Arabic Works

The translators of Arabic mathematical and astronomical works during the twelfth century prepared the way for an event of the first magnitude in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages—the reintroduction of Aristotelian learning into the West.^[424] It would lead us far beyond the bounds of this study to try to discuss the immense influence of Aristotelianism on the development of European philosophy and theology in and after the thirteenth century. Something of the geographical content of Aristotle’s writings on physics and natural science, however, was indicated in Chapter I, and it was during the closing years of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries that these works began to gain a hold on European thought. Their influence at this time was for the most part exerted through roundabout channels: probably in some cases through Latin translations of Arabic translations from the original Greek; unquestionably in others through Latin translations of Arabic translations of Syriac translations from the original Greek; and in still others through Latin translations of Arabic commentaries on Aristotle or of works inspired by his writings. The desire or ability to tap the sources of Aristotelian lore by direct recourse to 99Greek texts themselves was exceptional before the middle of the thirteenth century.

The precise date when the Occident became acquainted with the Physics and De caelo is a matter of some doubt. It is likely that Avicenna’s version of these two books had been converted into Latin at Toledo before the middle of the twelfth century by Dominicus Gondisalvi,^[425] who worked there under the patronage of Archbishop Raymond, but the extent to which these early translations influenced European science is a subject of controversy. It has been suggested by Duhem that Latin translations of Aristotle were known to the scholars of the Chartres school, Theodoric, Gilbert de la Porrée, and William of Conches, passages in whose works certainly reveal some familiarity with Peripatetic theories.^[426] On the other hand, there are no actual citations of Aristotle which would enable us to prove that the passages in question show first-hand knowledge of the books of the Stagirite.^[427] The fact that much Peripatetic thought had been brought to the West through the writers of the late Roman and earlier Christian periods often makes it difficult, in the absence of actual citations, to distinguish between what had been learned from these earlier sources and what was contemporaneously derived from the Moslems.

Gerard of Cremona

We are on much firmer ground when we turn to the work of Gerard of Cremona,^[428] for we know as a fact that before his death in 1187 this indefatigable translator had put into Latin, of the works of Aristotle of geographical interest, the first three books of the Meteorology,^[429] the Physics, the De caelo et mundo,^[430] and the De generatione et corruptione.^[431]

Michael Scot

Michael Scot, who died in 1236^[432] and was remembered by later ages as a great magician, was another student of Aristotelian science. After studying in Spain this Scotsman became court astrologer of the Emperor Frederick II in Sicily. He learned Arabic and composed treatises on astronomy, astrology (Liber 100introductorius and Liber particularis) and physiognomy under the influence of Moslem learning. He also undertook the translation of sundry works on alchemy and astronomy, among them the treatise of Al-Biṭrūjī, based on Aristotelian astronomy, and Aristotle’s De caelo with Averroës’ commentary. Associated with the Liber particularis we have the text of a questionnaire^[433] which Frederick II presented to Michael and which reveals something of that versatile Emperor’s burning interest in cosmology and physical geography. The philosopher’s “brief statements” in reply “concerning hell, purgatory, heaven, and the terrestrial paradise are followed by an account of the marvels of nature—strange lakes and rivers of the East, wondrous metals, stones, plants, drugs, and animals, with their respective virtues” (Haskins).^[434] Michael in this connection also gives expression to familiar, traditional opinions on the earth as a sphere, though he includes some original observations on volcanoes and hot springs.^[435]

Aristotelianism in the Thirteenth Century

By the time of Michael Scot Aristotelian theories of physics and of physical geography as introduced through Moslem channels were finding fairly general currency in the West. Arnold the Saxon, for instance, in his encyclopedic treatise written perhaps about 1225, gave citations from the De caelo et mundo, the Meteorology, and the Physics, as well as from Averroës and other Arabic admirers of Aristotle.^[436] Aristotelian cosmology, astronomy, and metaphysics, however, were not accepted by Western scholars until after a strenuous intellectual battle had been waged over them. Serious efforts were made to place these teachings forever under the ban of the church. In 1210 and 1215 strict prohibitions against the study of the Averroïstic versions of the Physics and Metaphysics were issued by the authorities of the University of Paris.^[437] This shows that by that time not only had the commentaries of Averroës been translated but that they must have become popular.^[438] Indeed, the popularity of Aristotle and Averroës was destined to increase despite all prohibitions, and after their works, by the middle of the thirteenth century, had been purged of objectionable matter 101by the ecclesiastical authorities, they became prescribed studies in the curriculum of the University of Paris. Aristotelianism dominated the scientific thought of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and the physical geography of the great encyclopedist, Albertus Magnus, was largely based upon it. Albert, indeed, was sometimes unjustly called Aristotle’s ape.

Opponents of Aristotelianism

On the other hand, there were many individuals who, though accepting the teachings of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators in regard to specific facts and theories, were none the less sternly opposed to blind and uncritical adoption of them.

William of Auvergne

William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris from 1228 to his death in 1249, was leader of the ecclesiastical party that stood out against the study of Aristotelian philosophy and theology in that city. It was nevertheless true, as Duhem tells us, that William’s erudition “had received in abundance additions from sources which had not enriched the erudition of earlier centuries: that is from the works of Aristotle and Arabic authors.”^[439] The De universo of William contains much material on cosmology and natural history.

Robert Grosseteste

The great English churchman, Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln from 1235 until his death in 1253, presents an even more striking example of the scholar, well read in Aristotelian and Arabic learning, who was prone to question many of the Peripatetic doctrines. Grosseteste deserves a high place in the history of medieval science by reason of the depth of his scholarship and the originality of his ideas. His style, however, is often difficult and obscure. From the geographical point of view several of his treatises are of unusual interest. The De sphaera is devoted to problems of astronomical geography. In the De impressionibus aëris seu de prognosticatione rules are laid down for the preparation of weather forecasts based upon astrological 102considerations. The De luce seu de inchoatione formarum explains Robert’s theory of the Creation. The De natura locorum, in which the influences of celestial rays upon the earth’s surface are discussed, gives expression to many views that were elaborated in fuller detail by Robert’s more famous pupil and intellectual successor, Roger Bacon.^[440]

Our period was marked by the production of encyclopedic works the object of which was to bring together as much human knowledge as possible in convenient, readable, and, frequently, in popular form. These encyclopedias carried on the traditions of Pliny, Solinus, Isidore, Bede, and other earlier writers and for the most part were lacking in originality. Made up of paraphrases and word-for-word excerpts from older books, they exemplify better than any other type of literary production the respect which the man of the Middle Ages felt towards the authority of the written word and his lack of critical acumen. Their immense popularity shows that they satisfied a distinct want: the lore contained in them, however worthless and puerile it often may seem to us, formed an important part of the intellectual cargo of the medieval mind. It is imperative, therefore, that representatives of this type of work should be consulted by anyone who wishes to arrive at a just estimate of the status of medieval knowledge.^[441]

Most of the geography of the encyclopedias was a geography handed down from classical times, a geography but distantly related to contemporary facts and one in which fabulous elements tended to persist and multiply at the expense of sound and accurate information. Yet it was the geography of the majority of the lettered men, and the man who did not himself actually travel found here practically the only convenient means of learning about the countries of the world. He might pick up occasional details of routes to Rome and Palestine from pilgrims, traders, or soldiers; but only in the pages of the encyclopedias could he find anything approaching a systematic treatment of the earth and its various parts.

The most widely read book of this nature was the De imagine mundi, which dates from about 1100. Though this has often been attributed in recent years to Honorius of Autun (it has also been ascribed to St. Anselm and with far greater probability to an unknown Honorius Inclusus), the evidence at hand is insufficient to warrant us in coming to any definite conclusions on the vexed question of its authorship.^[442] The general character of the compilation is illustrated by a remark at the close of the dedicatory letter: “I place nothing in this work except that which is approved by the best authorities.”^[443] The main source of the geographical chapters was the Etymologiae of Isidore, though the author also drew directly from Orosius.^[444] It seems likely, indeed, that the geographical chapter of Orosius served as a basis for the entire compilation and provided an outline which was embellished by copious excerpts of detail from the more elaborate writings of Isidore, Augustine, and Bede. Furthermore, it is even probable that the unknown author had a map before him.^[445] He appears to have borrowed directly from the Collectanea rerum memorabilium of Solinus his account of the marvels of India, though elsewhere he taps Solinus at second hand through the medium of Isidore.^[446]

Lambert’s “Liber Floridus;” Guido’s Encyclopedia

Dating from approximately the same period is a similar work, the Liber floridus of Lambert. Practically all we know of the author is that he was a canon of St. Omer early in the twelfth century.^[447] His book, a hodgepodge of notices, geographical and otherwise, from Isidore, Bede, Martianus Capella, Raban Maur, and others, though it did not enjoy popularity comparable to that of the De imagine mundi, nevertheless by no means lapsed into obscurity during the centuries that followed. There are at least eight manuscripts of it preserved in the libraries of Europe, and it was referred to with high praise by writers of the thirteenth century.^[448] The manuscripts are illustrated by crude maps, among the few remaining relics of twelfth-century cartography.

104Of much the same nature is an encyclopedic compilation made by a certain Guido, probably an Italian, in 1119.^[449] It contains excerpts from a variety of sources, including Isidore, the Romance of Alexander, Paul the Deacon, and, more especially, the anonymous Ravenna geographer.

“Lucidarius”

The De imagine mundi became an important source for later writings. It was a standard authority during the closing years of the Middle Ages for those who deliberately undertook to give a geographical description of the earth. The Lucidarius (or Aurea gemma) was a popular encyclopedia written in German towards the end of the twelfth century at the order of Henry the Lion. Though embodying the peculiar and fabulous features of the De imagine mundi, it omitted the drier but more correct geographical and topographical details.^[450] The principal source of much of the natural science in the Lucidarius was William of Conches’ De philosophia mundi. The Lucidarius was translated at a later date into Danish, Dutch, and Bohemian,^[451] and from it were derived the geographical portions of the famous Hortus deliciarum of the abbess Herrad of Landsperg.^[452]

Gervase of Tilbury

Another widely read book that came under the influence of the De imagine mundi was the Otia imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury,^[453] a protégé of Otto IV and by him appointed marshal of the kingdom of Arles. The Otia, composed to entertain the emperor during the leisure moments of his struggle with Frederick II, is in large measure a compilation of facts, fables, and theories borrowed from earlier works. The cosmological chapters are drawn from Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica, the geographical ones from Orosius, Isidore, and, more particularly, the De imagine mundi, which furnished a framework into which the statements of the other writers were made to fit.^[454] The large number of manuscripts of the Otia bears witness to its great popularity.

Jacques de Vitry, bishop of St. John of Acre until 1220, in his Historia hierosolymitana^[455] also borrowed from the De imagine mundi, especially in describing Palestine and Asia. His interest in the remarkable caused him to include, as had been done by the authors of the German Lucidarius, most of the fabulous elements of the earlier book as well as to add fabulous stories from other sources. It was these stories, derived in part from the Historia hierosolymitana and in part directly from the De imagine mundi, that accounted for the great popularity of a poem to which we must now turn.

“L’Image du Monde”

This poem, the Image du Monde,^[456] destined to be read for over three centuries, was decidedly the most important of the many works that felt the influence of the De imagine mundi. Like its Latin predecessor, it is an attempt at the popularization of universal knowledge. The work of popularization, however, was here carried to the stage of translation into a popular tongue, which rendered the book available to a much broader circle of readers. The style was vivid and not lacking in originality, and the subject matter contained sufficient of the grotesque and unexpected to assure the poem a long-lived success. Though the question of authorship and exact date is a somewhat perplexing one, it seems likely that the Image du Monde was partially composed in Metz in 1245 or 1247 by a certain Gossouin and within the following two or three years was added to either by Gossouin himself or by a certain Walter of Metz, to whom the entire work has occasionally been attributed.^[457] Prior, however, to the composition of the second verse redaction by Gossouin or Walter, the poem had been put into a prose form,^[458] from which translations were subsequently made into Hebrew, Judeo-German, and English (the last by Caxton in 1480).

“Konungs-Skuggsjá”

From the very end of our period there dates an Icelandic dialogue of more or less encyclopedic scope, a work which might 106well be called a northern counterpart of the De imagine mundi. This Konungs-Skuggsjá, or King’s Mirror,^[459] written about the year 1250 or perhaps as late as 1260, contains chapters that reveal to us something of the status of Scandinavian knowledge of the geography and natural phenomena of Iceland, Greenland, and the Arctic seas. But, like the Sagas, so far as we know, it was not translated into Latin or into the vernacular tongues, and the type of knowledge contained in it remained until the great age of discovery virtually the exclusive property of the peoples of Iceland and of the far north of Europe.^[460]

Great Encyclopedias of the Thirteenth Century

We cannot well leave the subject of encyclopedic compilations without mentioning such gigantic thirteenth-century productions as the Specula of Vincent of Beauvais,^[461] the various writings of Albertus Magnus,^[462] and the relatively less ambitious popularizations of Bartholomew Anglicus,^[463] Brunetto Latino,^[464] and others.^[465] The Opus majus of Roger Bacon is also encyclopedic in scope. These great works contain a wealth of reference the systematic study of which would unquestionably shed much additional light on the substance of medieval geographical knowledge. The innumerable pages of Albertus Magnus, indeed, show not a little originality; and Roger Bacon stands somewhat apart from his contemporaries as a fearless exponent of scientific method.^[466] On the whole, however, there is no very essential difference between the geography of these men and that of their less well-informed and perhaps less diligent predecessors. This is one reason why we have felt justified in failing to treat them in detail. Another reason is that adequate treatment of the geography of the thirteenth-century encyclopedists would fill another volume at least the size of the present one.

Dante

A figure, however, whom we cannot refrain from mentioning in this connection, though he lived after 1250 and though his genius far transcended that of any encyclopedist of any age, is Dante. Much of the information amassed by the laborious compilers of 107encyclopedic works (especially Brunetto Latino) was fused by the poet into the Divine Comedy and molded into his various prose writings. The universality of Dante’s knowledge embraced the geography and cosmography of his age. Though we shall not attempt to deal with Dante’s geographical lore^[467] in the pages which follow, it would be a serious mistake to omit all reference to one who flourished so soon after the end of our period and who, besides being a poet of all time, was an outstanding figure in medieval scholarship and, incidentally, in the history of medieval geography.

The reader who wishes to investigate the geography of Dante and of the encyclopedists of the thirteenth century will find brief summaries and references in Notes 92–98 to the present chapter.

The writings of the historians and chroniclers of the Middle Ages, though they do not as a rule include systematic expositions of geography, nevertheless often contain incidental geographical matter of no slight interest. The present section is devoted to a very few selected specimens of historical narrative of the Crusading age, whether prose or verse, that are of particular significance from the geographical point of view.

Otto of Freising

Among the outstanding medieval historians was Otto of Freising.^[468] A man of intelligence and breadth, steeped in the academic literature of his age, Otto, though never going out of his way to write of geographical subjects, always maintained an attitude of open and receptive interest toward all branches of science. The range of his literary and scholarly learning is a key to the intellectual attainments of the average man of the world of his period. Born about 1114 or 1115 of a noble or even royal family—his maternal grandfather was the Emperor Henry IV—Otto studied in Paris probably early in the second quarter of the century. After his return to Germany in 1132 or 1133, he became a Cistercian and was subsequently made bishop of 108Freising. His principal works were a Chronicon, running from the beginning of the world to the year 1146, and the Gesta Friderici, recording the deeds of Frederick Barbarossa down to the year 1156 and continued after that date by Ragewin (or Rahewin).^[469] Among other classical authorities Otto may have used Seneca’s Quaestiones naturales: most of his geographical ideas, however, were derived from Isidore and Orosius and from certain unknown “topographers” whom he cites as giving details on the rivers of Europe.^[470]

Gunther of Pairis

On the Gesta Friderici was based an historical poem composed about 1186 by Gunther of Pairis (in Alsace), of whom we know next to nothing.^[471] This work, the Ligurinus, adds little of material nature to the sources from which it was taken, although the poet converts the simple, straightforward narrative of Otto and Ragewin into a poem vividly expressed. It has been shown that the Ligurinus, even though the work of a German author, is a typical product of the poetical school of France of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.^[472] Where the writer expands and converts into verse Otto’s and Ragewin’s words describing natural features of the earth’s surface and geographical regions, he displays a sense of color and a feeling for nature that are striking,^[473] even though the actual epithets employed are hackneyed and drawn from well-known classical models. Furthermore, in the description of Germany he departs so widely from his literary sources that it seems more than likely that he actually based his lines on personal acquaintance with the country.^[474]

Walter of Châtillon; William the Breton

Two other historical poems of the same school and of analogous character to the Ligurinus are the Alexandreis^[475] of Walter of Châtillon (also known as Walter of Lille), written about 1180, and the Philippis of William the Breton, published about 1225.^[476] These are Latin hexameter epics modeled on Virgil and Lucan; full of allusions to Latin literature and mythology, they also 109show originality and a power of accurate description of scenes and country.^[477] The Alexandreis sings the deeds of Alexander the Great; the Philippis the exploits of Philip Augustus of France.

Historians and Histories of the Crusades

Our period was the age of the reopening of the Levant and the regions of the Black Sea to Western knowledge through the Crusades and through the expansion of commerce that came in their train. The historians of the Crusades, consequently, furnish us with geographical notices of a kind differing from the stereotyped and secondhand geography of the encyclopedias. The items in the Crusaders’ records are often the results of actual experience. They give us an impression of freshness lacking in the pages of dry compilations like the De imagine mundi. But the Crusaders were not geographers and were without any true geographical instinct. They rarely felt an interest in anything besides the immediate events they were undertaking to describe or in matters not purely practical or utilitarian.^[478]

The most important work, from this point of view, is the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum of William of Tyre (born 1130).^[479] This covers events in Palestine and in the Crusaders’ states during the years between 1095 and 1185 and abounds in observations on the products and appearance of the country, on the habits of the Arabs—whose language William had probably learned^[480]—and on other peoples of the East.

The Gesta regis Ricardi, which has sometimes been erroneously ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough,^[481] records the voyage of Richard Coeur-de-Lion to the Holy Land in 1190. In the description of the routes to and from Palestine^[482] we find a wealth of detail about the countries, isles, and seas traversed. The distinctly nautical style and content in places make it seem not at all improbable that a part of the book at least was derived from some sailing manual. Roger of Hoveden in his Chronica^[483] (to the year 1201) made use of the same sources as those on which the author of the Gesta regis Ricardi drew, though Roger’s account is fuller and more detailed, especially regarding Spain. Another 110source for the Crusade of Richard Coeur-de-Lion is the Estoire de la guerre sainte by Ambroise,^[484] a professional writer, who took part on the expedition and who described the Holy Land with less understanding than William of Tyre almost exclusively from the point of view of the sufferings and hardships experienced by the Crusaders.

The Prise de Constantinople^[485] of Robert de Clari, a history of the Fourth Crusade by a participant, is the work of a man of relatively humble estate but of a man who felt more or less genuine interest in strange peoples and their customs. This interest is manifested particularly by the data that he gives on the Komans of the Russian plains, some of whom he undoubtedly had seen on the streets of Constantinople.

A letter from the patriarch of Jerusalem to Innocent III, entitled La devision de la terre de oultremer et des choses qui i sont,^[486] was composed about 1200 in reply to a request from the Pope for information concerning the Saracen countries. In this anonymous work a geographical sketch of Egypt and Palestine shows that its author had no limited acquaintance with the Moslem faith and the Mohammedan peoples.

Scandinavian Historical Works

The geographical knowledge acquired by the Crusaders became the common property of all Western Europe. That which was acquired by the Vikings, on the other hand, was disseminated practically not at all among the peoples of the Latin West. Brief mention, therefore, must suffice for the Scandinavian sources, even though of all European folk the Vikings were the most adventurous voyagers and their geographical horizon the widest.

The introduction of Christianity marked the end of the heroic age of Norwegian and Icelandic history. It also ushered in an extraordinary period of literary productivity, the age of the Sagas^[487] and Eddas.^[488] The composition of the Sagas began in the twelfth and lasted on into the fourteenth century, but the events which they relate occurred far back in pagan days. For the most part bald but telling narratives of adventure, war, and 111litigation, they devote little space to comment or description; and the numerous place names mentioned are referred to as if the reader were already familiar with them.

The records of the farthest voyages of the Vikings to the shores of Wineland the Good were not given the final written form in which we now know them until after the close of the thirteenth century.^[489] On the other hand, the history of Iceland was told by Ari Frodhi (1067–1148) in his Íslendingabók;^[490] and the chronicles of the settlement of the coasts of this isle and of the discovery of Greenland are recorded in the Landnámabók,^[491] or Book of Settlements, the original of which probably dates from the twelfth century. The famous Heimskringla of Snorri Sturluson, the greatest of early Scandinavian historians, records the history of the kings of Norway. Its title means “the Round World,” and the prelude consists of a brief geographical description of the principal countries of the world. The text includes no less than sixteen Sagas, among them that of Sigurd the Crusader chronicling an adventurous voyage (1109) of a king of southern Norway to the Holy Land by way of the Strait of Gibraltar and homeward overland. Scattered geographical references are found in other Sagas and in the Icelandic^[492] and Greenland Annals^[493] which, though written after our period, throw light on events that took place before the mid-thirteenth century.

Latin Histories of the North

Besides the Sagas, three historical works written in Latin by Northern writers of our age deserve particular mention inasmuch as they all contain geographical descriptions of the Scandinavian world. The first of these is the history of Adam of Bremen. On strictly chronological grounds Adam, who died about 1076, belongs before the opening of the Crusading age. We shall discuss him, however, among the historians of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, to whose works his writings are more akin in spirit than to those of the earlier Middle Ages. Adam was canon of Bremen and master of the cathedral school of that city in the time of the great Archbishop Adalbert, who had 112“made Bremen an Arctic Rome and his court the greatest center of Northern learning” (Beazley).^[494] The archiepiscopal province of Bremen was the largest in the entire medieval church, including all of Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, the Orkneys, the Faroes, and the Hebrides. Adam was thus placed in a most favorable position to gather together materials on the geography and history of these northern lands. His great work (called sometimes Gesta Hammenburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, sometimes Historia ecclesiastica, and sometimes Bremensium praesulum historia) is in four books, the last of which deals with the geography of the North. Much of this was based on information derived from contemporaries; but Adam was also well read in Latin literature and often quotes and copies from the works of Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Solinus, and Orosius.

From somewhat more than a century later we have another Latin history of the Scandinavian North—if Saxo Grammaticus’ curiously heterogeneous combination of mythology, folklore, poetry, and accurate observation deserves the name of history. The first book of this work, known as the Gesta Danorum, contains a formal geographical sketch of Denmark, the Baltic, the Scandinavian Peninsula, and remoter countries and isles beyond the Atlantic, wherein fact is blended with romance. There are also occasional observations of geographical interest scattered through the later books.

Finally, in an anonymous Historia Norwegiae dating from the early thirteenth century we find an introductory passage on the geography of the regions with which this history deals: a concise description of Norway is followed by briefer comments on the tributary islands, Iceland, Greenland, the Orkneys, and the Faroes. Especially interesting are the author’s observations upon the volcanoes of Iceland. The contents show that, like Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, the writer must have been familiar with the standard geographical books of the Middle Ages, with Bede and Solinus, and perhaps with Isidore and Pliny. The Historia Norwegiae, however, can never have enjoyed great popularity, or else more than one manuscript would be known at the present day.^[495]

Many of the legends of our period contain material of geographical significance, and a few of these may claim our particular attention.

Romance of Alexander

The stories of Alexander the Great served to direct men’s attention eastward, for, besides narrating the adventures of the Macedonian conqueror, they gave, as we have already seen,^[496] details of a sort about the geography of Asia, particularly of India.^[497] Not only were the earlier Latin versions derived from the Pseudo-Callisthenes paraphrased and copied by historians,^[498] but new elements were added to the cycle—notably the Iter ad Paradisum,^[499] an account of Alexander’s journey to Paradise. Walter of Châtillon (or of Lille), about 1180, composed in the style of Lucan a great Latin hexameter poem entitled Alexandreis, based in part on the legendary stories of the Macedonian and in part on the more authentic histories of Justin and Quintus Curtius.^[500] The widest currency, however, was given to the Romance through its translation into the vernacular tongues. The oldest French version, which covers the earlier portion of the Romance only, was written by Alberic of Besançon (early twelfth century?) in octosyllabic verse of the dialect of the Dauphiny.^[501] This was translated into German by one Lamprecht and was rendered into the langue d’oïl in decasyllabic form.^[502] The Romance reached its highest vernacular development in a version in alexandrines,^[503] the joint composition of Lambert li Tors of Châteaudun, Alexander of Bernai (or of Paris), and Peter of St. Cloud. The existence of more than twenty manuscripts testifies to the popularity of this great poem, which is a sort of mosaic from various sources.^[504] Much of it came from the Pseudo-Callisthenes through the medium of Valerius, the Epitoma of Valerius, Alberic of Besançon, and the decasyllabic poem; but some elements can be traced back to Orosius, Justin, Quintus Curtius, Eustatius, and Josephus, and the texts show many later interpolations of unknown origin. The Romance in alexandrines was drawn upon in its turn by 114later compilers. From the mid-thirteenth century there dates a poem, probably by one Eustace of Kent, which incorporates much material from this and other sources.^[505] It includes miscellaneous geographical elements; and certain of the manuscripts are adorned with a wealth of magnificent miniatures, representing, among other things, the marvels of India and all the fantastic creatures encountered by Alexander throughout the East.

Prester John

During our period the belief was spread abroad in the existence of a numerous Christian population in Asia. We find an account of Christians in India in an anonymous report of the visit of a certain Patriarch John of India to Rome in 1122, the authenticity of which is apparently confirmed in a letter of Odo, abbot of St. Remi in Rheims, to a certain Count Thomas.^[506] Of far greater importance was the fabulous story of Prester John. Belief in this mighty Christian potentate and his immense kingdom may be traced in large measure to the widely read Letter of Prester John, dating in its earliest form from before 1177,^[507] addressed in some manuscripts to the Byzantine Emperor^[508] and elsewhere to other Western monarchs. The popularity of this is attested by the fact that Zarncke, its editor, knew of no less than eighty manuscripts. The question of the sources of the Letter in its original form is obscure, though the origins of the numerous interpolations can nearly all be explained. Much, certainly, was borrowed from the Alexander stories, and much from the legend of St. Thomas in India; other parts are indubitably connected with the great Oriental reservoir of fabulous and miraculous lore. The account of the visit of Patriarch John to Rome and the Letter of Prester John constituted the principal sources of an anonymous and highly fanciful description of India and of Prester John’s country found in a twelfth-century manuscript in the Heiligenkreutzerstift, near Vienna, and commonly called the Elysaeus account.^[509] The Letter of Prester John was not only extensively read in its various Latin versions but was translated into French, Italian, German, and English.^[510]

Another legend which enjoyed perhaps an even greater popularity was that dealing with the wanderings of St. Brandan (or Brendan) in the Western Ocean. The story occurs in several distinct forms.^[511] The Latin version had already taken shape before our period opened and perhaps dates back to the ninth century or earlier. From it was derived in part an Anglo-Norman version composed in 1121, which ultimately found its way into the Image du monde. The legend furthermore gained currency among the Teutonic peoples in a somewhat different version developed probably from a twelfth-century French original.

The travels of pilgrims and traders during the Middle Ages have been the subject of more careful research in recent years than many other aspects of our study.^[512] Consequently, it will suffice merely to give a very brief statement of the more significant pilgrim records dating from the Crusading age.

Christian Pilgrim Narratives

The first pilgrim after the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 who has left a fairly complete account of the Holy Land was the Anglo-Saxon, Saewulf,^[513] a traveler who visited Palestine in 1102 and 1103, combining trading enterprise with religious zeal. From the middle of the century the journeys of John of Würzburg,^[514] of his follower Theoderic,^[515] as well as of the Icelandic abbot, Nikulás Bergsson^[516] of Thverá, deserve mention because in these records we find a personal touch that distinguishes them from the majority of similar narratives. The latter as a rule show that the pilgrims, like the medieval men of learning, suffered from that tendency, so characteristic of their age, to copy slavishly what others had said rather than to rely on their own powers of observation. This is particularly well illustrated by the majority of pilgrim records dating from after the early years 116of the twelfth century, when, as Beazley puts it, a decline had set in, “hastened by the compilation of standard guidebooks, which may be faintly described as legendary and inaccurate, and from which the later pilgrim narratives blindly copy, to the ever growing exclusion of anything independent or scholarly. Two of these handbooks, known as the Old and the New Compendium, are the source of most of the tracts on the Holy Road which have been left us, under various names, from the time of the Second Crusade to the close of the Middle Ages.”^[517] To this dry, guidebook type belong the narrative ascribed to Fetellus, archdeacon of Antioch,^[518] and a series of anonymous accounts of pilgrimages dating from the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Though several of these contain more or less original matter, the desiccating influence of the Old Compendium is nearly everywhere apparent.^[519]

Besides the pilgrims other travelers were on the road, and the records of their travels have in some cases come down to us. The journeys of Giraldus Cambrensis through Wales and Ireland will be discussed in the next section, on topographical works. Narratives of travel are also occasionally to be found in historical works and chronicles, poems, and letters.

Letters of Travel

The letter was an honored form of literary expression throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. Carefully composed epistles of the ecclesiastic and educated man of the world were looked upon as more than mere media for the conveying of information. Not infrequently they were highly polished specimens of stylistic art, worthy of finding a permanent place in literature. From our point of view, they are of interest for the personal accounts of journeys which they sometimes contain.^[520] Guy of Bazoches, for instance, who was precentor of the church of St. Stephen at Châlons, gave a brilliant description of his experiences and of what he saw on the Crusade of 1190 in a series of letters to his nephew and to others.^[521] Conrad of Querfurt, bishop of more than one see in Germany during the last years of the twelfth century, wrote enthusiastically of his wanderings 117through Italy in a letter preserved for us in Arnold of Lübeck’s Chronica Slavorum.^[522] A thorough study of the epistolography of the Crusading age would surely reveal a wealth of geographical lore.

Jewish Travelers

The Jews of the Middle Ages often journeyed farther afield than their Christian contemporaries. Their travels, for the most part in the interests of commerce, though in some instances in the nature of pilgrimages to Jerusalem, a city holy to Jew and Christian alike,^[523] were facilitated by the presence of Hebrew communities in nearly all the cities of Europe and Western Asia. Strongly imbued with the racial consciousness of a vigorous and often oppressed people, the members of these communities did all in their power to receive the travelers and speed them on their way. The books composed by such Jewish wanderers as Benjamin of Tudela and Petachia of Ratisbon have been preserved and are invaluable as geographical records. It should be remembered, however, that they were written by men of a despised race and in a tongue unknown to the Christians of the West and that the geographical lore which may have been widespread among the more intelligent Hebrews never became an integral part of the geographical knowledge of Christendom. Hence in the pages which follow and which deal primarily with the geographical knowledge of Western Christendom but relatively little space can be devoted to Jewish geography.

A few words, nevertheless, must be said of Benjamin and of Petachia.

Benjamin of Tudela

Rabbi Benjamin came from the small Spanish city of Tudela on the Ebro. It was probably about the year 1159 that this observant wanderer journeyed eastward from his native town, moving leisurely through southern France, Italy, Greece, Constantinople, and thence by sea to Syria. After a thorough examination of the cities of Syria and Palestine he made his way overland to Baghdad. It is unlikely that he penetrated beyond Mesopotamia, though on his homeward journey he visited Egypt 118sometime before 1171 and returned to his home in Castile in 1173. He appears to have kept a record as he went along, and from a critical examination of his book it is possible in a general way to reconstruct his route. He describes in detail the cities he passed through and the distances in days’ journeys, though not the directions, from one to another. He notes particularly the names of the leading Jews of each place and gives estimates of the numbers of the Jewish population. Indeed, probably one of his main purposes was to get in touch with Jews of as many countries as possible in order to determine where they were treated well. One result of the Crusades was an outburst of persecution of Hebrews throughout Christendom, and Benjamin, besides traveling for the sake of trade, was undoubtedly seeking for places “where his expatriated brethren might find an asylum” (Adler).^[524] But, as well as revealing an interest in the Jewish inhabitants of the regions he traversed, his book gives us many significant data in regard to commerce and politics, monuments and natural features. For the regions actually visited by Benjamin this information is accurate and precise, but for the farther parts of Asia it becomes confused and often legendary.^[525]

Petachia of Ratisbon

The second of the great Hebrew travelers of the twelfth century was Rabbi Petachia of Ratisbon in Bavaria. In the ninth decade of the century Petachia traveled eastward from Prague through Poland, Russia, Transcaucasia, and Kurdestan to Baghdad, whence he returned homeward by way of Palestine. The outward journey was a most unusual exploit for this time, traversing the steppes of Russia then infested with wild Tatar tribes. Unfortunately, much that was most important and significant in Petachia’s book appears to have been removed by Rabbi Yahudi the Pious, “who acted as Petachia’s literary mouthpiece” (Beazley).^[526]

We must now examine a few works on the geography and topography of local regions.

In a manuscript of the mid-twelfth-century writings of Godfrey of Viterbo, and in all probability to be ascribed to Godfrey, there is a poem entitled Denumeratio regnorum imperio subjectorum.^[527] The writer explains his purpose in the following terms: “Not the wars of kingdoms are here set forth, but their fortune (pride?), their rivers, the extent and kind of regions which constitute them, the types of customs, the manner of harvesting and of trade.”^[528] In the course of the poem he treats of Rome, of Apulia and other Italian districts subject to Rome, of the kingdom of the Lombards, of Venetia, of “true France”—by which he means the lands of the Franks along the lower Rhine—of Basel, of Alsace, of Strasburg, of Worms; but, though much of the detail constitutes a poetic geography of peoples and cities, little attention is paid to physical features.

Gervase of Canterbury

Among the lesser writings of the English chronicler, Gervase of Canterbury, we find a mappamundi dating from about the year 1200.^[529] This is a brief account of England, its dimensions^[530] and languages, followed by a table in three columns showing, for each county. (1) the most important ecclesiastical officers, archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priors; (2) the names of the churches; and (3) the religious orders and mother churches to which the various ecclesiastics appertained. After this there follows a list of hospitals, castles, islands, fresh- and salt-water springs, and other curiosities.

Giraldus Cambrensis

By all means the most important topographical works of our period, however, came from the pen of Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald of Barry (c. 1146-c. 1222).^[531] This active and intelligent Norman-Welsh ecclesiastic, who at the time had already made one visit to Ireland, was appointed chaplain to Henry II in 1184 and in the following year was sent as counselor to the young Prince John on the latter’s expedition to Ireland. During the expedition he collected materials for two treatises, the first of which, the Topographia Hiberniae, was completed in 1188. 120Though Giraldus’ knowledge of Ireland in reality was limited, barely extending beyond the areas occupied by the English, though his impression of the Irish people was prejudiced and hostile, and though he overburdens us with the recitation of marvels, his books show, none the less, that their author possessed a keen interest in natural history and geography and that his powers of observation were far from mediocre. The second treatise, the Expugnatio Hiberniae, or history of the English conquest of the island, contains much less geographical material than the Topographia.

In 1188, when Henry II was about to start out on the Crusade, he sent Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury into Wales to preach there and urge the people to take the cross. Giraldus accompanied the archbishop on this tour and subsequently wrote an account of it in his Itinerarium Kambriae. Together with the Descriptio Kambriae that followed a few years later, this contains many accurate and important remarks and notes on the physical and human geography of Giraldus’ native land.

These treatises on Ireland and Wales hold a unique position in the literature not only of our period but of the entire Middle Ages. Brewer, in his introduction to the collected works of Giraldus, says that the Topographia Hiberniae is a “monument of a bold and original genius” and that Giraldus “must take rank with the first who descried the value and, in some respects, the proper limits of descriptive geography.”^[532] Though this may be a little too strong, we readily agree with Dimock’s estimate of the treatises on Wales: “His account of the land and the people of Wales will bear very honourable comparison with any topographical attempt that had appeared up to his time and with any that appeared for many ages afterwards.”^[533] Giraldus was in a very real sense the forerunner of the modern writer of the better sort of book of travel. His works reveal to us a mind keenly interested in the results of its own observation and not merely in collecting what others had said. Giraldus was certainly enthusiastic, and we are almost tempted to say that he was endowed with an “outdoor” and even “Rooseveltian” interest in the world about him.

121Before leaving the topographical works, mention should be made of a little anonymous guide to the monuments and antiquities of Rome, the Mirabilia urbis Romae,^[534] dating from the late twelfth century and widely read during the years that followed.

From the age of the Crusades date several of the most characteristic medieval maps. These highly important sources, which serve so admirably to illustrate the geographical conceptions of the time, have been made the object of such thorough and careful research by Konrad Miller,^[535] the results of whose investigations are well summarized in Beazley’s Dawn of Modern Geography,^[536] that it hardly seems necessary here to devote a great deal of space to them. Let us merely indicate what the more important maps were, and show in a general way their relation to the literature of the age, leaving for Chapter XI a brief discussion of them as typifying medieval geographical thought.

We saw in Chapter II that the maps of the world drawn before 1100 and now extant could nearly all be classified in four groups.

Zone Maps

1. Of the first, zone maps, or diagrams illustrating the division of the earth’s surface into zones, examples occur in twelfth- and thirteenth-century manuscripts of Macrobius, of the De imagine mundi, of Lambert’s Liber floridus (Fig. 3), of William of Conches’ De philosophia mundi, of Herrad of Landsperg’s Hortus deliciarum, and of John of Holywood’s De sphaera.^[537] The Paris manuscript of Peter Alphonsi’s Dialogus also contains two related diagrams, one showing the eccentricity of the sun’s orbit and the other the division of the northern hemisphere into climates. Arabic influence upon Peter Alphonsi is revealed by the fact that south is at the top of his diagrams, instead of east, according to the almost universal custom of medieval Christian cartography.^[538]

T-O Maps and Sallust Maps

2. The diagrammatic T-O group are also represented. By all means the most interesting of these is a map preserved in a manuscript 122in St. John’s College, Oxford, and dating from 1110. Somewhat more elaborate than others of the same type, this one assigns Greek names to the cardinal points of the compass, a circumstance which has given rise to a plausible conjecture that it may have been a copy of an original found in the Levant at the time of the First Crusade.^[539]

Fig. 3—Zone map in an early twelfth-century manuscript of Lambert of St. Omer’s Liber floridus, viz. Ghent Codex 2, fol. 24 vo. East is at the top. (From Miller, Mappaemundi, vol. iii, 1895, fig. 59.)

3. There also date from our period several examples of the ornamented T-O maps drawn to illustrate Sallust’s works.^[540]

Beatus Maps

4. We saw that the existing specimens of that series of maps of the world drawn to elucidate a passage in Beatus’ commentary 123on the Apocalypse appear to have come from two sources: (a) maps which were modeled closely on the original map of Beatus or a contemporary copy and (b) those which were merely generalized outlines of it.^[541]

a. A map dating from 1203 and preserved at Osma in Old Castile comes nearest to the original in design and form, if not in the richness of detail (Fig. 4). Alone of all the Beatus type this shows the heads of the twelve apostles scattered over the earth’s surface. Another map, probably derived from the same source, is to be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; though it is rich in detail, little attempt was made to show localities in their proper relative positions, and consequently the geography represented is chaotic to an extreme.

Fig. 4—Osma Beatus map dating from 1203 showing the division of the world among the twelve apostles. East is at the top. (From Miller, Mappaemundi, vol. i, 1895, p. 35.)

124b. There are also three or four maps dating from our period from the second source. Their main interest lies in the remarkable naïveté of workmanship.

Maps of Lambert, Guido, Henry of Mayence, and Others

In addition to the above, for which we have prototypes from the period before 1100, there are a number of maps of the world of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the prototypes of which either have been lost or never existed. Among the most notable of these is one found in certain manuscripts of Lambert’s Liber floridus.^[542] It was compiled from the usual medieval authorities, Isidore, Orosius, Julius Honorius, Martianus Capella, Pomponius Mela, Solinus, the Pseudo-Callisthenes, and the Bible, though there also appear upon it a few names that could have been taken only from contemporary sources. The influence of Macrobius is most strikingly revealed, for, unlike most other medieval maps which indicate the known world (Asia, Europe, and Africa) as occupying the entire area or by far the greater part of the world disk (as in the Beatus group), Lambert’s map divides the disk along its diameter by a zone representing the course of the sun and places in the southern hemisphere an austral continent of magnitude equal to that of the oikoumene.^[543]

Guido’s compilation of geographical works, made in 1119, contains in two manuscripts not only a T-O map but also a map of the world accompanying a selection from the book of the anonymous Ravenna geographer and a detailed map of Italy and the surrounding lands. The map of the world is peculiar because of the enormous area which the Mediterranean occupies. Miller believes it to be a reduced sketch of a large map of the world and holds that the detailed map of Italy is a copy of a small portion of this same original.^[544]

A compilation of the De imagine mundi, put together by one Henry, canon of the Church of St. Mary in Mayence, in 1100 and preserved in a late twelfth-century copy in Cambridge, England, contains a world map (see below, p. 245, Fig. 6, inset). Though indirectly made from the sources that the writers of the De imagine mundi and other medieval cosmographies utilized, it was 125probably not compiled directly from the De imagine mundi but rather from a large wall map. Its affinities to the immense late thirteenth-century world disk in Hereford Cathedral make it seem possible that both had a common source. In addition to the older nomenclature, about a dozen more modern place names are to be found upon it.^[545]

A map of the world which somewhat resembles that of Henry of Mayence is also to be found in two manuscripts of the Chronica maiora (or Historia maiora) of Matthew Paris. Though there are many names that have come down to modern times, the geography is meager and poor, in striking contrast to the detail of Matthew’s map of Britain,^[546] to which reference is made below.

To complete the discussion of mappaemundi, mention must be made of a very small but very neat little map in a late thirteenth-century Psalter in the British Museum. If this was not actually drawn during our period, it undoubtedly had predecessors much like it, and it shows marked resemblances to the map of Henry of Mayence as well as to the Hereford and Ebstorf maps.^[547]

Regional Maps

Several of the regional maps, or maps of limited areas, dating from our period may be merely fragments or copies of small portions of maps of the world. This is certainly true of the map of Europe in the Ghent manuscript of Lambert’s Liber floridus, which depicts that continent crammed into slightly more than a quarter of a circle with no attempt to show the articulations of the coast. The Guido map of Italy, as we have already seen, probably represents a portion of a larger map, and the same can possibly be said of the maps of the East and of Palestine which follow a treatise by Jerome, entitled De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum, or De Palestinae locis, in a manuscript now in the British Museum. Though these two maps were actually drawn in the twelfth century, they represent the cartography of a very much earlier age and perhaps may be attributed to Jerome himself.^[548] They were drawn to illustrate the Biblical geography of Palestine and the Orient, and they show a great wealth of Scriptural legends. Other legends were taken from profane sources, 126such as the writings of Isidore, Orosius, Julius Honorius, Dionysius, and the Romance of Alexander; and affinities to the Peutinger Table show that the draftsman was under the influence of the cartography of the Roman imperial epoch.

Among the regional maps that had no connection with mappaemundi are plans of Jerusalem (“Situs Ierusalem”) accompanying twelfth- and thirteenth-century manuscripts of an anonymous work written about 1109 and entitled Gesta Francorum Ierusalem expugnantium (Fig. 7, p. 250, below). Though these plans reveal many names from the early Crusading age, their outlines as a whole—the fact, for instance, that Jerusalem is shown to be circular instead of rectangular—make it seem probable that they represent a schematic diagram of the Holy City going back to as early as the sixth century and brought up to date by the anonymous compiler of the Crusading epoch.^[549]

Matthew Paris’ Maps of Britain

In addition to the map of the world of which we have spoken already, the works of Matthew Paris contain no less than five regional maps.^[550] Two of these, the “Situs Britanniae” and the “Schema Britanniae,” are simple diagrams of Britain and are of no particular importance. The other three are far more significant. The first, a pictorial itinerary of the route from London to southern Italy, with legends in Old French and Latin, delineates vividly towns and principal topographic features. The second is a map of Palestine which superficially resembles that of Jerome; the names, however, are in French, and the legends refer to places familiar to the contemporary pilgrim and Crusader. Finally come the three manuscript variants of Matthew’s map of Britain, which, as Beazley observes, “among all designs of purely medieval origin ... show the best evidence of critical study, the most systematic attempt at the exact delineation of a particular country”^[551] (for one variant, see below, p. 343, Fig. 9). There is a profusion of detail and accuracy in the representation of the relative position of places refreshing when we contemplate the confusion and credulity manifested in the earlier works. This map is also the first example of late medieval cartography in which north instead of east is shown at the top of the sheet.

Geography in the Middle Ages did not form a distinct and separate science. The student who learned anything of geography learned it incidentally to the study of other subjects and never thought of it as sufficiently dignified to enjoy a place by itself in the scholastic curriculum. Even the word “geography” was scarcely ever used.^[552] The term cosmographia, sometimes employed to distinguish certain aspects of our subject from geometry, included practically all branches of natural history, the sciences of animals, rocks, monstrosities, and meteorological phenomena. On the other hand, cosmography did not comprise many of the topics with which we are concerned, particularly those lying on the border line between geography, astronomy, and geology. The question of the origin of the earth was in the province of the theologian of the Middle Ages.

The well-known seven liberal arts formed the foundation of the work in the medieval schools. From them the student might advance to higher researches in philosophy and theology, but the seven arts were the base of all learning.^[553] Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii was an attractive and somewhat imaginative exposition of the arts and had become one of the most popular of medieval textbooks long before the twelfth century.^[554] Here each art is personified as a gorgeously clad woman, and the seven together compose the escort of “Philosophy.”

In practical teaching, the arts were divided into two groups: the trivium, comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (or logic); and the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy (astrology), and music. Geoffrey of St. Victor, in his Fons philosophiae, gives^[555] an allegorical description of the arts as a 128spring which divides into two main streams, the trivium and quadrivium, that in turn separate into three and four lesser streams respectively. The teaching of practically all the natural science of the Middle Ages was included in the quadrivium. Geometry was generally expanded to include geography and quite naturally so in view of prevalent opinions regarding its origin. Adelard of Bath, in his De eodem et diverso, repeats an old story to the effect that in the early days men began to set up stones as boundaries.^[556] Disputes about claims inevitably arose, in Libya because of sand, and in Egypt because the Nile often obliterated or destroyed the stones. This necessitated the invention of the science of geometry, or surveying, by the application of which the bounds might be replaced so that it would be “possible for all the centuries to have an everlasting rule for the measurement of land.”^[557] Out of the invention of geometry, Adelard adds, arose subsequently the custom of subdividing territory into areas of various sizes.^[558] Thus it happened that geometry had become closely allied in the classical and medieval mind with matters of geographical or topographical interest. Capella includes his long geographical discourse among chapters devoted to geometry and makes his symbolical figure of the latter science carry in one hand a compass and in the other a sphere to represent the terrestrial globe.^[559] Alan of Lille, in the Anticlaudianus, describes Geometry as carrying a scale with which she measured the earth: “The maid carries a rod by which she encircles the entire earth.”^[560] In the sculptured figures of the cathedrals Geometry is often depicted compass in hand.^[561]

Geography was not always placed in a subordinate position to geometry in the quadrivium. In the De divisione philosophiae of Dominicus Gondisalvi, which follows the Aristotelian rather than the Platonic division of knowledge, we find our science grouped under astrology. Of the latter art, Dominicus says,^[562] there are three parts: the first is concerned with the number and shape of the heavenly bodies; the second with their movements; and the third with the earth, those regions that are inhabited and 129those that are not, the climates, and the varying influences exerted by the location of places and the revolutions of the universe over happenings on the earth’s surface.^[563]

Both geometry and astrology belonged in the quadrivium. Where did the higher study of the arts of the quadrivium fall in the general classification of knowledge?

The medieval mind tended to seek for a logical and symmetrical subdivision of the sum of all knowledge. The desire for systematization found its supreme expression in the great philosophic structures of the thirteenth century, the systems founded on Aristotle and devised by such men as Albertus Magnus. Prior to the thirteenth century confusion had reigned. According to the Platonists, who divided philosophy into logic, ethics, and physics, the study of the mathematical and natural sciences—and, therefore, of geography—fell under the heading of physics. Aristotle, more logically perhaps, had divided the subject matter of all human learning into two great categories, theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge included physics, mathematics, and metaphysics (or theology). The studies of the quadrivium were thrown by the Aristotelians under the heading of mathematics: geography, then, became to those who followed the Aristotelian classification—Gondisalvi, Hugh of St. Victor,^[564] Roger Bacon—a sub-department of mathematics.

But on the whole we need not linger over this topic, because the question of exactly where geography belonged in the artificial systems devised by the medieval mind was largely a matter of academic interest even in the Middle Ages and was without influence on the actual condition of the geographical lore of that time.

PART II THE SUBSTANCE AND CHARACTER OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL LORE OF THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES — CHAPTER VI COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, AND COSMOGRAPHY — GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE COSMOLOGY AND NATURAL SCIENCE OF THE PERIOD — THE CREATION — MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM — SHAPE, MOVEMENTS, AND SIZE OF THE EARTH — ZONES, THE ANTIPODES, AND “CLIMATA” — CHAPTER VII THE ATMOSPHERE — METEOROLOGY — CLIMATOLOGY — CHAPTER VIII THE WATERS — THE WATERS ABOVE THE FIRMAMENT — THE CONGREGATION OF WATERS — THE OCEANS AND SEAS — THE WATERS OF THE LANDS — CHAPTER IX THE LANDS — CLASSIFICATION OF LAND AREAS — MOUNTAINS — VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES — DESERTS — ISLANDS — INFLUENCES OF GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT — FEELING FOR LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY — CHAPTER X THE ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE KNOWN WORLD — Phenomena Resulting From Differences in Latitude — “ Climata ” — Geographical Coördinates — Methods of Finding Latitude and Longitude — CHAPTER XI CARTOGRAPHY — INACCURACY — TECHNIQUE — SUMMARY — CHAPTER XII REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY — GENERAL CHARACTER OF REGIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE PERIOD — THE “OIKOUMENE” AS A WHOLE — THE CENTER OF THE “OIKOUMENE” — THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE — ASIA — AFRICA — THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA — EUROPE — ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN — CHAPTER XIII CONCLUSION — The Outstanding Elements of the Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades — Character of the Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades

In the preceding chapters the attempt has been made to show the origins of a large part of the geographical lore of the Crusading epoch, the sources from which we may learn about it, and where it stood in the classification of learning. Now we may turn to our central theme: an estimate of its actual substance and character.

This geographical lore was in no sense a unified body of knowledge and belief. It was no more a unit than the religious thought of the age, or the philosophy, astronomy, or morals. No one in the Middle Ages was acquainted with all the facts and theories with which we shall have to deal. Mental caliber, credulity, critical spirit, curiosity, opportunities for research and for travel—these all varied widely with the individual and determined his geographical concepts. Nevertheless, though there was no unity of knowledge or belief in regard to specific facts and no unity of point of view, the reader will not fail to perceive, in the multitude of illustrative details which are presented, that certain habits of thought and modes of expression were typical of the epoch as a whole.

We must first discuss what was known and believed about the earth in its larger relations, both in time and space, to the remainder of the universe: opinions about the Creation, about the size and shape of our terrestrial globe, about the influences exerted by the heavenly bodies in determining or affecting geographical conditions upon its surface.

In the Introduction we explained why it is justifiable when dealing with ancient and medieval geography to wander into the fields of cosmogony and cosmography far beyond what are now regarded as the rightful limits of geography. The present chapter, it is hoped, will make clear how closely medieval conceptions of the present condition of the earth may be connected with the medieval idea of the origins and nature of the universe.

These difficult questions of cosmogony, cosmology, and cosmography excited keen and vivid thinking because they lie on the border between philosophy and theology. Men were more interested in attempting to solve the insoluble mysteries of God and the universe than they were in the world of nature immediately surrounding them. Immense and weighty volumes were written in commentary on the Works of the Six Days, wherein complicated arguments were elaborated with the finesse of scholastic logic. In an age of faith, the religious enthusiasm of the architect and artisan was transmuted into lofty cathedrals; that of the theologian turned to the elucidation of the words of Scripture. To analyze these words, to comment upon their minutest detail, to reveal the meaning that presumably lay behind them was not only a work of piety and devotion but an absorbing intellectual pastime for keen-witted thinkers. In more concrete realms of natural science, the epoch was characterized by little enough observation and creative thought. The teachings of Plato, of Aristotle, and of the other available classical, Arabic, and early Christian authorities were accepted and adopted uncritically. Very different was the case with matters of cosmogony and cosmography. Here was highly controversial ground where classical opinions were either enthusiastically defended as casting light on Scripture or else bitterly attacked as subversive of all truth.

The Chartres Group: Bernard Sylvester and Theodoric

We have seen in Chapter IV that the scholars of the Chartres group and their pupils during the early twelfth century were endowed with peculiar freedom of thought.^[565] We note in the works of Bernard, Theodoric, Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, and Bernard Sylvester a wide departure from authoritative, orthodox theology. Theodoric, William, and the two Bernards were readers of Chalcidius’ translation of the Timaeus, of Macrobius, and perhaps of the writings of the great ninth-century Platonist, John Scot Erigena, and all four felt the powerful and seductive attraction 135of Platonism. Bernard Sylvester was almost an out-and-out pagan, so much so, indeed, that his writings can hardly be considered to lie within the pale of Christian theology.^[566] Theodoric and William tried harder to reconcile Platonism with the teachings of the church, yet they did so in a rationalistic spirit almost as abhorrent to strict orthodoxy as the paganism of Bernard Sylvester. Theodoric expressly stated in his De sex dierum operibus that he was going to explain the different Works of the Six Days “according to physical principles,” and, following the letter of the text,^[567] he proposed to avoid all allegorical and moral interpretations of Scripture. He believed that the best way to attain a genuine knowledge of God was through an accurate understanding of what God had created; and his explanation of the Creation, as we shall soon see, was independent to a degree that amazes us in a writer of his time. The following phrase is particularly significant where Theodoric extols Moses’ treatment of the Creation in Genesis, saying: “He shows in a rational manner the causes out of which this world has come into existence and the order of time in which this same world was founded and adorned.”^[568] Hauréau writes of the first book of Theodoric’s commentary: “Quant au premier livre, essai d’accord entre la Genèse et le Timée, où l’on voit la religion et la philosophie conspirant à résoudre le plus grave et le plus obscur des problèmes, le problème de l’être, et se déclarant satisfaites de l’avoir résolu, ce premier livre est ... de plus grand intéret.”^[569]

Adelard of Bath and William of Conches

In the Quaestiones naturales Adelard of Bath gives vent to his scorn for the mentality that blindly accepts beliefs merely because they have the weight of authority behind them. In an extraordinary passage he expresses these ideas thus (as translated and paraphrased by Professor Haskins^[570]): “‘It is hard to discuss with you,’ Adelard tells his nephew [in the dialogue form of the Quaestiones naturales], ‘for I have learned one thing from the Arabs under the guidance of reason; you follow another halter, caught by the appearance of authority, for what is authority but a halter?’... ‘If reason is not to be the universal 136judge, it is given to each to no purpose.’^[571]... While plants spring from the earth by God’s will, this does not act without a reason.^[572] Human science must first be listened to ... and ‘only when it fails utterly should there be recourse to God’ as an explanation.”^[573]

William of Conches shows the same spirit where he insists that God acts reasonably and not capriciously. He writes: “I am aware that some people assert, ‘Though we do not know how this happens to be so, we know that God can make it so.’ Wretched ones! What is more craven than to talk in that way! Because God can do something is no sign that he actually does it, nor any reason why he should do it, nor any reason why it is useful that it should be done. For God does not do whatever he can do. To employ a rustic expression: ‘God can make a calf out of a tree trunk,’ but does he ever do so?”^[574] William apparently, unlike Theodoric, thought that we are justified in avoiding irrational deductions from Scripture by an appeal either to an allegorical interpretation or—what is even more surprising at a time when the word of authority was usually regarded as all-sufficient—to one’s own intellect: “We may begin our reasoning from the authority of a master, but it should be perfected by our own intellect.”^[575]

Concept of Natural Laws

Thus we see in the writings of Adelard, Theodoric, and William that the approach was tentatively made toward the acceptance of the doctrine that the universe is governed by natural laws. This doctrine, upon which the edifice of modern science has been built, was also given partial expression by other thinkers of the twelfth century. John of Salisbury stated in effect that a sequence of causes gives rise to all things that we may perceive with our senses, that we call these causes nature, that nothing happens that is not the result of natural causation even though the operation of this causation may be concealed from us; finally, that the first cause of all is the will of God.^[576] Alan of Lille clothed a similar theory in allegory by personifying Nature in poetic form as the representative of God and making her say: “Hear how in this universe, as in 137a great city, order is established by the control of a majestic government” (Moffat’s translation).^[577] Much the same opinion was expressed by an anonymous Scandinavian historian of the early thirteenth century in his Latin Historia Norwegiae. After describing a terrible volcanic upheaval from the bottom of the sea,^[578] this writer adds that many people regard such occurrences as prodigies, believing that the world itself thereby gives warning of its own destruction.^[579] Citing Solinus, he goes on to set forth a purely physical explanation of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and adds that, though it may not be possible to attain to clearsighted understanding of these phenomena and of the major marvels of the world, they should not be looked upon as prodigies nor considered as portents of universal cataclysm. On the contrary they are, as it were, the servants of the all-knowing and immutable founder of the universe to whose nature through some marvelous process they have been placed in bondage.^[580]

The Orthodox Tendency

This sort of reasoning, however, was exceptional. In the mid-twelfth century the appearance of Peter Lombard’s Sententiae tended to divert the theologian’s mind from Platonic and rationalistic studies and to restore Church Fathers and Scripture to paramount authority.^[581] We look in vain for traces of the liberal attitude of the Chartres scholars in the orthodox works of such prolific writers but perhaps less clear thinkers as Peter Comestor, Giraldus Cambrensis, Gervase of Tilbury or even Alexander Neckam. Giraldus’ Symbolum electorum^[582] contains a cosmography in verse which explains the Scriptural view of the Works of the Six Days, and though we feel in this poem the influence of the Peripatetic physics—which by this time were becoming universally known—no attempt was made to expound the work of the Creation according to physical laws. In the Topographia Hiberniae^[583] Giraldus illustrates his own attitude and the dominant attitude of his age by the moral he draws from the story of eagles which occasionally fly so high that they scorch their wings in the sun. This he compared to the hopeless vanity of the man who tries to solve by reason or by knowledge God’s riddles of the Creation and 138of the universe. Neckam also despairs of explaining the mysteries of nature and asks, “Who may comprehend the causes of things?” He describes thunder and lightning briefly but adds, “The herald of the thunder fills the mind with terror and shows how great is the creator thereof.”^[584] Even Michael Scot, who enjoyed the patronage of the enlightened, scientifically minded Emperor Frederick II, attributed the fact that the waters of the spherical earth are held in place to “a secret virtue ... beyond human ken and merit” (Haskins).^[585] Gervase of Tilbury reproduces uncritically in his Otia imperialia^[586] the ideas compiled by Peter Comestor regarding the Creation. These were strictly correct opinions on which no suspicion of heterodoxy could be thrown. Comestor went out of his way to express opposition and antagonism to Platonic teachings.

Effects of Influx of Arabic Science

The conventional orthodox position, however, did not remain unchallenged. The influx of Moslem Aristotelian lore at the end of the twelfth century was held to be as menacing to the integrity of the ecclesiastical tradition as any of the Platonic doctrines. But, though stern prohibitions were leveled against the study of Aristotle and his Arabic interpreters, the seductions of Aristotelianism could not be resisted, and those elements of Peripatetic science which did not seem utterly outrageous to Christian theology became the accepted and authoritative science of the West in the mid-thirteenth century. William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, stood out valiantly against what he regarded as teachings subversive of Christianity and of morals and in his vigorous opposition to Aristotelianism even went so far as to adopt many of the Platonic doctrines that had been popular among the scholars of Chartres during the preceding century.^[587] But translators like Gerard of Cremona had done their work too well, and the enormous tomes of Albertus Magnus were based to a large extent on the learning of the Stagirite.

The usual medieval treatise on the Works of the Six Days as described in the Book of Genesis deals with many problems. Some 139of these are abstruse and metaphysical: questions of the nature of God and the nature of time and space. With these we are not concerned. Others are more concrete: questions of the materials out of which God made the universe and of the actual manner in which he worked.

Problems

For the sake of clearness let us state some of these questions as follows, (1) The question of whether matter existed prior to God’s creation of the world. That is to say, Did God fashion the universe out of a pre-existing substance or did he make it out of nothing? (2) The question of the manner in which the universe was fashioned after it was once “created.” (3) The question of what furnished the light during the first three days before the creation of the sun. (4) The problem of whether the Six Days were actual divisions of time or merely hypothetical divisions of the process of creation. (5) The question of the nature of the waters above the firmament. (6) Various problems arising in regard to the nature and location of Paradise and of the four rivers flowing from Paradise. The first four problems are discussed briefly in the present chapter. That of the waters above the firmament is left for Chapter VIII (on waters), and that of Paradise for Chapter XII (on regional geography).

The Preëxistence of Matter

(1) Did matter exist prior to God’s creation of the universe as we now know it?

Consistently with his Platonism, Bernard Sylvester thought that God formed the universe out of what he termed materia primordialis—a chaotic mingling of the elements that had coexisted with God before he converted the universe into its present shape.^[588]

The Orthodox View

Theodoric of Chartres, on the other hand, explicitly denied the coëxistence of the materia primordialis with God before the Creation. In this respect he showed himself far less divergent than Bernard from the Christian point of view. The work of the first 140day, he said, was the creation from nothing of the materia of the universe, out of which earth and heaven, fire and water and life were to be evolved.^[589] This materia was the hyle, or chaos, of the ancient philosophers, he explained, and was designated by Moses in the book of Genesis under various names.^[590] For example, when Moses wrote, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. i, 1) the words “heaven” and “earth” referred to chaos; when Moses wrote, “And the earth was without form and void” (Gen. i, 2) the word “earth” referred to the primordial mixture of land and water, a mingling of land that was not solid and of water that was not liquid. Air and fire at that time were of about the density of water.

Theodoric’s interpretation of the initial process of the Creation was entirely in keeping with the views of more orthodox writers. Peter Lombard, for instance, wrote as follows: “In the beginning God created the ‘heaven,’ that is to say the angels, and the ‘earth,’ by which is meant the material which composed the four elements. The latter were as yet in the confused and formless condition to which the Greeks gave the name of chaos, and this was before any day.”^[591]

Peter Comestor also set forth an orthodox view of the Creation. In his commentary on Genesis he revealed a love of the number three and classified every thing possible into groups of three.^[592] He pointed out how Moses had avoided three errors. “First, that of Plato, who had conceived of three coëxistent things, God, ile (hyle, or chaos), and time, and that the world was made out of ile; second, that of Aristotle, who had conceived of two coëxistent things, the world and the fashioner thereof (mundus et opifex); and third, that of Epicurus, who had also conceived of two, space (inane) and matter in the form of atoms, and that in the beginning natural processes had brought together certain atoms to form water, others to form earth, and others to form fire. Moses, however, had said that God alone was eternal and that the world was created out of nothing, for there was no matter in existence prior to the ‘Creation.’”^[593] “In the beginning” meant in the beginning of time as well as of matter, for time and matter were coëternal.^[594]

William of Conches refused, on rational, physical grounds, to believe in the possibility of a chaos preëxisting the Creation.^[595] Having accepted the classical doctrine whereby the four elements were arranged in concentric spheres in order from heaviest to lightest,^[596] he was unable to conceive of a time when they could have been so intermingled that they contradicted this law, though there may have been a time, he conceded, when the earth was completely enveloped in a thick mantle of water reaching very high and when air and fire themselves were denser than they now are. Such a condition, William thought, was that described in Genesis i, 2.^[597]

Processes of the Creation

Theodoric of Chartres’ Theory

(2) How was the universe converted into its present form after God had once created it?

Most commentators answered this either by saying or tacitly implying that it was through the immediate operation of God’s will alone. Theodoric of Chartres’ theory, therefore, is peculiarly interesting, because Theodoric maintained that the formation of the universe resulted from what we should now style a series of purely mechanical and chemical reactions which began, once the composition of the materia was completed, on the first day. For its time this was an extremely hazardous view, akin in some respects to the modern belief in the sufficiency of physical and chemical action to produce practically all observable phenomena.

Let us examine Theodoric’s theory in a little greater detail. In Genesis i, 2, we read the words, “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Theodoric explained that by the “waters” was meant the whole of matter:^[598] the “spirit of God” was that which was destined to give order and form to the chaos, that is to say the “force which fashioned” or “operated” (virtus artifex or virtus operatrix). Plato had called this force the World Soul, the Christians called it the Holy Ghost,^[599] and through its agency the evolution of the universe out of chaos by physical processes was rendered possible.

142Coincidently with the creation of the original materia the universe had assumed a rotary motion,^[600] each complete rotation marking a day. In the further unrolling of the universe, fire was the active element (artifex et efficiens causa), earth the passive element, and air and water stood as intermediaries between fire and earth. During the first rotation, or first day, the fire heated and illumined the inferior elements in such a manner as to cause the air to be released from them (aer ex inferioribus elementis spissatus), and thus the atmosphere came into existence.^[601] On the second day the fire, by illuminating the air, transmitted heat to the third element, water, which rose in the form of clouds. Some of this vaporized water ascended so high that it passed into the second heavenly sphere, where it became the “waters above the firmament,” the firmament itself, according to Theodoric, being the atmosphere.^[602] So much water in this manner was absorbed out of the original materia that inevitably on the third day the earth appeared like islands in the midst of the waters remaining behind. Theodoric compared these to islands that are formed when water dries after it has been spilled upon a table. Immediately the heat of the atmosphere was mingled with the humors of the earth, and the latter thereby received the power of producing vegetable life, herbs and trees. On the fourth day the stars were formed out of the waters which had been drawn above the firmament. On the fifth day the heat of the universe brooded over (incubuit) the waters of the earth’s surface and gave birth to fish and birds. Finally, on the sixth day, the life-giving heat reached the earth; and from it the animals were created, including, of course, man.^[603]

William of Conches’ Theory

William of Conches’ theory of the Creation did not differ a great deal from that of Theodoric, except that the materia primordialis was not, in his opinion, a chaotic mingling of the elements; for within it, he thought, as we have already seen,^[604] that the elements were arranged in their proper order according to accepted classical laws of physics. The lands were uncovered by the removal of the waters, though this took place later in the process 143according to William than it did according to Theodoric. William attributed the drying off of the waters partly to the warmth of the stars (which were not formed until the fourth day) and partly to the creation of the water and land animals on the fifth and sixth days respectively.^[605] In different portions of this primordial land, when it was just in the act of emerging from the waters, fiery, watery, earthy elements were present in varying quantities. This condition gave birth to divers varieties of animals. Where the fiery element was in excess, choleric animals, like the lion, came into being; where the water element prevailed, phlegmatic animals, like the pig; and the earthy element produced melancholic creatures like the ass and cow. At the one and only place where the combination was absolutely equal, man appeared. Woman, on the other hand, was made from a combination almost like that of man but one in which the colder elements were very slightly in excess, because the warmest of women by nature is colder than the coldest of men! This last, an extremely free and heretical and from our point of view unchivalrous theory, William retracted in his old age.^[606]

Function of Light in the Creation

(3) What was the nature of the light which God made when he said, “Let there be light”? Although Augustine had interpreted this passage allegorically or mystically as referring to the creation of the world of the angels,^[607] he had also suggested that God might have created an actual body of light corresponding to the sun. Bede^[608] developed the latter suggestion and maintained that there must have been a luminary revolving around the earth as does the sun. In the twelfth century Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Comestor, both of whom interpreted Scripture more or less literally in this respect, followed Bede. Hugh maintained that this original light was like a luminous cloud which rose in the east and set in the west,^[609] and Comestor spoke of it in much the same terms.^[610] Other theologians, however, refused to believe that such a light could have actually existed and reverted to Augustine’s first explanation that by the light was meant the world of angels as distinct from the world of evil spirits below.^[611] Peter Lombard referred 144to both interpretations, though he appears to have been inclined to favor the more literal and materialistic theory of Bede.^[612]

With Robert Grosseteste light is made to play the leading part in the entire process. In his unpublished Hexaemeron^[613] and in the De luce^[614] he sets forth a theory of cosmogony which was derived in part from the Moslems but in essentials was original.^[615] We trust that the following brief statement of the theory does not do violence to the thought of Grosseteste as expressed in the De luce. He conceived of light as the first corporeal form and also as giving form to the materia prima of the universe. By radiating through the unformed materia prima the light converted it into a sphere. Thereupon the light made its way from the outer edge of the sphere towards the center. As it passed through the various realms of the universe it diffused, rarified, and purified the materia of each, but with each stage of its advance its powers were diminished and correspondingly the potentiality of each successive realm of being purified was diminished. Thus thirteen concentric spheres were produced, nine celestial spheres and four spheres of the elements, and each of these was more complex, dense, and impure than its neighbor above.

The Nature of the Six Days

(4) Were the Six Days described in the book of Genesis actual divisions of time? The words of the Bible seemed to be contradictory on this point. From the words of Genesis alone one would gather that the completion of the universe was accomplished in six days. On the other hand, we read in Ecclesiasticus (xviii, 1), “He that liveth forever created all things together” (Qui vivit in aeternum, creavit omnia simul). According to Theodoric of Chartres^[616] these two statements referred to different events. The passage in Ecclesiasticus applied only to the creation of the materia primordialis on the first day. The works of the succeeding days were the result of the automatic development of natural processes by which the universe became as we now know it. Belief in the reality of the duration of the Six Days was shared with Theodoric by most commentators, such as William of Conches, Hugh of St. Victor,^[617] Peter Lombard, and Peter Comestor. Augustine, 145however, had argued in a more abstruse vein that the “days” were not actual units of time but that they represented merely so many distinct operations in the work of creation.^[618] And in our period Arnold of Chartres urged that the Creation was carried out in one day and all at once (uno die et semel).^[619]

Eternity of the Universe

Though they differed in the details of interpretation, these theories were all based on the fundamental acceptance of the axiom, deduced from Scripture, that God created the universe out of nothing. In Chapter II was explained the antagonism between this view and the Aristotelian doctrine of an eternal, periodically re-formed universe. Certainly, among Christians of our period, no one believed either in the eternity or in the periodicity of the universe, although the existence and nature of these concepts were well known. Both theories were set forth in Seneca’s Quaestiones naturales,^[620] in translations of Plato’s Timaeus^[621] and of Aristotle’s Meteorology^[622] and De generatione et corruptione,^[623] and in translations from the Arabic such as the Liber introductorius in astrologiam of Abū Maʿshar^[624] and the pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de proprietatibus elementorum.^[625] When William of Conches specifically denied the possibility of more than one deluge he may have had in mind the pagan association of Noah’s flood with the Great Winter.^[626] Certainly one of the primary objections of the orthodox Christians to the acceptance of Aristotelian science during the early years of the thirteenth century lay in the fact that Averroës, the great interpreter of Aristotle, was firmly convinced that the universe is eternal.^[627] William of Auvergne also vigorously attacked the Aristotelian theory as it found expression in Avicenna’s commentary on the Metaphysics^[628] and Robert Grosseteste leveled destructive criticism against it in his Summa super libros octo Physicorum, a commentary on the Physics of Aristotle, and in other works.^[629]

Bernard Sylvester’s Account of the Creation

Before leaving this aspect of the subject, a few words should be said about two other accounts of the Creation that found literary 146expression in Western Europe during our period. Very dissimilar, these two accounts are akin only in the circumstance that they were both based upon the mythology of an older age and that, though written by Christians, neither referred in any way to the Scriptural story. One was the remarkable allegory in Bernard Sylvester’s De mundi universitate, the other the Icelandic myth of the Creation as recorded in the Edda of Snorri Sturluson.

In the Megacosmus, or first part of the De mundi universitate, Bernard tells us of the confusion of matter in the eternal ages that preceded the “Creation.”^[630] Nature, personified, laments to “Nous,” or Providence, about this confusion and demands that the universe be put into an orderly condition: “Nous,” moved by the appeal, carries out the task, separating the elements, arranging the nine hierarchies of angels, placing the stars in the firmament and regulating their orbits, ordering the four winds, and, finally, fashioning the earth in the midst of the universe. The last process gave Bernard occasion to digress and to tell of the riches and beauties of this earth.

The Microcosmus, or second part of the book, goes on to relate the story of the creation of man. “Nous” sees the barren desolation of an inanimate world and orders Nature to undertake the work of peopling it. With the aid of Urania, goddess of the stars, Nature seeks for Physis, goddess of life, whom she finds in the terrestrial paradise after Urania has conducted her on a long journey through the heavenly spheres. Here she tells Physis her mission; and Physis carries out the fashioning of a human body, in which the soul is then established. Thus was man created.

No comment is needed to bring out the pagan character of this account, wherein the Six Days are not even mentioned! It would probably be wrong, however, to assume that this work of literary imagination, any more than Snorri’s graphic record of the beliefs of his forefathers, represents a formulated and accepted doctrine of its author.

The Icelandic Account

The Icelanders were converted to Christianity in the mid-eleventh century, and the mythology of their pagan days still 147remained fresh in their minds and hearts during the period we are studying. The old gods were looked upon with affection, and the old story of the Creation was remembered with sympathetic understanding. The Icelandic myth of the Creation is one of great beauty and vigor. In it is revealed the impression made upon the minds of a northern people by struggles against the cold and stormy darkness of the subarctic winter. The outline of the story, which is worked out in much detail in the Eddas, is about as follows.^[631]

In the beginning a great abyss lay between the icy rivers and the drizzling rains and blasts of wind of the north and the blazing heat of the south. This was before heaven and earth and sea were made. “And Fimbultyr said: Let the melted drops of vapor quicken into life, and the giant Ymer was born in the midst of Ginungagap^[632] [the abyss]. He was not a god but the father of all the race of evil giants. This was Chaos.

“And Fimbultyr said: Let Ymer be slain and let order be established. And straightway Odin and his brothers ... gave Ymer a mortal wound, and from his body they made the universe; from his flesh, the earth; from his blood, the sea; from his bones, the rocks; from his hair, the trees; from his skull, the vaulted heavens; from his eyebrows, the bulwark called Midgard. And the gods formed man and woman in their own image of two trees, and breathed into them the breath of life. Ask and Embla became living souls, and they received a garden in Midgard as a dwelling place for themselves and their children until the end of time. This was Cosmos” (Anderson).^[633]

All medieval accounts of the Creation culminate in the creation of man, as modern outlines of evolution conclude with man’s evolution from lower forms of life. Christian theology taught that the universe itself was made for man, a view that persists even to this day. Grosseteste asserted that when man “no longer requires the processes of generation and corruption which the movements of the heavens cause, the heaven itself will cease to move 148and time will be no longer.”^[634] Rupert of Deutz explained that mountains were placed upon the earth to protect human beings against the winds.^[635] But if the universe and all its parts were made for man, medieval thinkers held, with the Stoics of antiquity,^[636] that man himself was a lesser universe (minor mundus), or microcosm, comprising all the elements both physical and spiritual which constitute the greater universe, or macrocosm.

Explanation of Fig. 5—The human figure here represents the microcosm in the midst of the universe. The heads of the animals give rise to the winds, which Hildegard believed controlled the movements of the celestial bodies (see p. 171). The blast originating in the human head at the right and moving in a counter-clockwise direction runs opposite to the movement of the firmament. “This blast did not give forth his breath earthward as did the other winds, but instead thereof it governed the course of the planets” (Liber div. op., in: Migne, Pat. lat., vol. cxcvii, col. 791, as cited by Singer, op. cit. p. 28).

In another miniature from the same manuscript (fol. 9 ro) shown in Singer, op. cit., pl. VII, the universe is revealed in much the same manner with the human figure as the microcosm. There is also represented the macrocosm, as a larger figure standing behind and holding the sphere of the cosmos; only its head, feet, and hands appear.


149Fig. 5—The macrocosm, the microcosm, and the winds, from a miniature in an illustrated codex of Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber divinorum operum in the Municipal Library at Lucca, fol. 27 vo. (Redrawn, by permission, from Singer, Scientific Views and Visions of Saint Hildegard, 1917, pl. VIII.) For explanation, see bottom of opposite page.

The doctrine of man as the microcosm had its roots far back in antiquity. Medieval writers from the time of Isidore elaborated upon it with detail and ingenuity. In the literature of our period it occurs in many a passing comparison of the phenomena of nature with the human body, such as that of the De imagine mundi where rivers are compared with blood vessels.^[637] It forms an important element in the cosmology of Bernard Sylvester’s De mundi universitate^[638] and of Herrad of Landsperg’s Hortus deliciarum.^[639] Hildegard of Bingen’s writings are full of similes and medical recommendations based upon it (Fig. 5).^[640] In her Subtilitates the abbess says: “In the creation of man from the earth other earth was taken, and all the elements served man because they perceived that he lived; both the elements and man worked together to each others’ advantage in all relationships.”^[641] The thought is expressed more clearly in the Causae et curae: “Oh, man! Look at man, for man has in himself heaven and earth and all other things that are created, and his form is one and in him all things lie hidden.”^[642] To illustrate the detail in which Hildegard worked out this theory we may do no better than to quote from Thorndike’s summary. “She compares the firmament to man’s head, sun, moon, and stars to the eyes, air to hearing, the winds to smelling, dew to taste, and ‘the sides of the world’ to the arms and sense of touch. The earth is like the heart, and other creatures in 150the world are like the belly. In the Liber divinorum operum she goes into further detail.... From the top of the cerebral cavity to the ‘last extremity of the forehead’ there are seven distinct and equal spaces, by which are signified the seven planets which are equidistant from one another in the firmament. An even more surprising assumption as to astronomical distances is involved in the comparison that as the three intervals between the top of the human head and the end of the throat and the navel and the groin are all equal, so are the spaces intervening between the highest firmament and lowest clouds and the earth’s surface and center.... As the heart is stirred by emotion, whether of joy or of sorrow, humors are excited in the lungs and breast which rise to the brain and are emitted through the eyes in the form of tears. And in like manner, when the moon begins to wax or wane, the firmament is disturbed by winds which raise fogs from the sea and other waters.”^[643] The preface to the Subtilitates contains another discussion of the microcosm in the course of which the stones of the earth are likened to bones and it is pointed out that the earth has sweat, humors, and other by-products of the body.^[644] Much of the argument of the Causae et curae is based upon the assumption that the very diseases of man have their counterparts in the facts of the macrocosm.

When once created, what form did this universe take, and the earth within it?

Sphericity of the Universe

Nearly all the authors of our period appear to have shared in the belief that the universe is a sphere and that the earth is situated in its center. Lambert of St. Omer says in his Liber floridus: “We say the earth is the center, that is, the point in the middle of the sphere.” “For the earth is located as a central point in the midst of the celestial circle through which the sun passes.”^[645] Robert Grosseteste stated that the sphericity of the universe was necessitated by the nature of the substances composing the heavenly bodies and that it could be proved by simple astronomical 151observations.^[646] There is, perhaps, an echo of Pythagorean mathematical doctrines in the exposition which we find in the Image du monde, that the world is round since God desired it to be so, because roundness is the most perfect of all forms.^[647] Al-Farghānī, whose work was translated more than once during our period and formed the basis of much that is found in John of Holywood’s De sphaera,^[648] had said that there was no difference of opinion among learned men that the universe was a sphere. That the earth is in the center of the heaven, he asserted, was shown by the fact that half the heaven is always visible from all parts of its surface.^[649] The author of the De imagine mundi had also thought the same way:^[650] he compared the universe to a ball, or to an egg of which the shell corresponds to the upper heavens, the white, to the upper air, the yolk, to the lower air, and the pinguedinis gutta, or drop of grease in the center, to the earth.^[651] Gervase of Tilbury,^[652] who borrowed the idea from Comestor,^[653] and the author of the Image du monde^[654] make similar comparisons, although Peter Abelard,^[655] William of Conches,^[656] and Daniel of Morley conceived of the four parts of the egg as corresponding exactly to the four elements.^[657] Michael Scot compared the earth, surrounded by water, to the yolk of an egg and the spheres of the universe to the layers of an onion.^[658]

In her Causae et curae, on the one hand, and in her Scivias and Liber divinorum operum, on the other, Hildegard of Bingen makes contradictory statements in regard to the position of the earth in relation to the heavenly spheres. Scientific consistency was not, perhaps, the ascetic abbess’s strongest quality, and too much emphasis should not be laid upon contradictions found in the writings of one who believed herself to be favored by special divine revelations. The passage in the Causae et curae, however, diverges so widely from current medieval opinion that it is worth translating. “The earth,” writes Hildegard, “is of moderate size and is near the base of the firmament, because if it were in the center of the firmament, then it would have to be larger; and even so it would easily fall and be shattered to pieces, had it the same expanse of air beneath that there is above.”^[659] On the contrary, in her Liber divinorum operum she tells how she saw in a vision 152the universe as a wheel^[660] and that “in the midst of the air the earth was placed in such a way that the air measured an equal distance above the earth, below the earth, and on either side of the earth.”^[661]

Shape of the Earth

Most writers of the Crusading age thought the earth also was a sphere, though there was less unanimity in this belief. The De imagine mundi calls it a sphere, whence comes the term orbis.^[662] William of Conches^[663] furnishes us with the Aristotelian proofs of sphericity. If the earth is flat, he says, it would be day at the same time in the farthest east as in the farthest west. Certain stars are visible in one latitude that cannot be seen in another, and this would not be the case if there were no curvature from north to south.^[664] John of Holywood, following Al-Farghānī, gave two proofs that the earth is round and two that the water is round.^[665] That there exists a swelling or curvature of the earth (tumor terrae), he says, is shown by the difference in the time of eclipses between places in the east and west as well as by differences in the visibility of stars.^[666] The curvature of water surfaces is demonstrated by the fact that a person standing at the foot of a mast is frequently unable to see objects visible to somebody at the masthead. Furthermore, since water is a homogeneous body, all parts of it must partake of the nature of the whole. Therefore it follows that because a drop is round, the mass of the waters of the earth must also be spherical.^[667]

Gervase of Tilbury has been accused of believing that the earth is square, though the evidence in the text of the Otia imperialia on which this accusation is based is very slender; and other texts would seem to support the opposite contention, that he accepted the theory of sphericity.^[668]

Two passages in the Causae et curae of Hildegard can apparently be explained only on the supposition of a flat earth.^[669] Hildegard seems also to have been haunted by the old belief that bulked so large in the imagination of Cosmas Indicopleustes,^[670] the belief that the earth rises into an immense mountain in the north.^[671] She asserted that this mountain prevented the light of the east 153from penetrating the darkness of the north and the darkness of the north from obscuring the light of the east. On the other hand, in her visions the abbess more than once saw the earth as a globe.^[672]

In the writings of the mystic Hugh of St. Victor we have a typical medieval allegorical interpretation of the words of Scripture regarding the earth’s form, with instructions as to how a map of the world ought to be made.^[673] Hugh compares the orbis terrae to an “oblong circle,” or oval, drawn around the ark, touching each corner. An oval shape was necessitated by the rectangular ground plan of the ark. Within this oval the mappa mundi, or map of the world, is to be drawn, with the front of the ark facing the east, and its rear, the west. In the segment formed to the east, between the ark and the circle, is Paradise; in that to the west the resurrection will take place; the chosen will go to the right, and the damned to the left into Hell, which forms the segment toward the north. Beyond this “oblong circle” another circle is to be drawn to show the zones, and the space between the two is the atmosphere.

One hesitates to draw conclusions from this as to what shape Hugh imagined the earth to be; probably he himself had no very definite theory. The picture which his description seems to invoke in our minds is that of a flat oval earth covered by an ovoid heaven, and certainly it is in every respect inconsistent with belief in a spherical earth.

Immobility of the Earth

However men may have thought about the shape of the earth, there was no questioning the fact that it stands immobile and firm. Doctrines like that of the Pythagorean Philolaus had no place in medieval thought.^[674] The ignorant, nevertheless, were often puzzled by the problem of what supports the earth. The author of the De imagine mundi was content uncritically to explain that no fulcrum or support is necessary for this purpose but that the “divine power” is all-sufficient.^[675] He quoted the one hundred and third Psalm: “Who hast founded the earth upon its own bases: it shall not be moved for ever and ever.”

154Theodoric of Chartres, Adelard of Bath, and John of Holywood, on the other hand, adduced proofs of the immobility of the earth which had been derived indirectly from Aristotle. Theodoric asserted^[676] that the earth does not gain its compactness either from its inherent nature, because earth is actually observed on occasions to become mingled with air; or from the weight of the overlying atmosphere and sphere of fire, because these have no weight. What, then, keeps it from flying to pieces? Here Theodoric appealed to the Peripatetic reasoning that the circular motion of the heavens necessitates the existence of a solid and immovable body in the center.^[677] All heavy bodies acquire their substantia, or solidity, from the motion of light bodies; and conversely light bodies derive their motion from heavy bodies.

The Quaestiones naturales of Adelard of Bath is in the form of a dialogue between Adelard and a nephew who asks questions. The nephew was much puzzled by the fact that, whereas heavy objects like rocks need a piece of wood or other support to hold them up in the air, the earth as a whole, much the heaviest of all, requires no such support.^[678] Adelard replies first that the earth does not fall because there would be no utility in its doing so; then he proceeds to show by a rational argument (rationabiliter) why the earth does not need a support. The principal quality of earth he says, is heaviness; heavy bodies naturally seek the lowest position (infimum); the lowest position of a spherical body like the universe is its center—though why this latter proposition is so, Adelard fails to make clear. At all events, the earth tends to seek the center of the universe, just as a stone thrown into an imaginary hole piercing the center of the earth would come to a halt there.^[679] Since the center of the universe is one point, not several, the earth forms a single unit, not several; and for these reasons, moreover, the earth is stable and immobile.

John of Holywood explained^[680] the same thing more briefly than Adelard by simply stating that the immobility of the earth is due to its weight, since it is the nature of all heavy things to seek the center of the universe and since the earth is the heaviest of all elements. Both Adelard’s and John of Holywood’s arguments 155suggest the Aristotelian doctrine of an equilibrium of forces around the center of the globe, though this doctrine is not cited in so many words. Like most medieval writers, Adelard and John seem only partially to have understood the obscure texts from which they derived their proofs and to have left out many links in their chains of reasoning.

Size of the Earth

Though the geocentric hypothesis prevailed in the Middle Ages, there is plenty of evidence to show that the smallness of the earth in relation to the heavenly bodies was understood.^[681] William of Conches had thought that the sun was eight times as big as the earth.^[682] In the Image du monde this theme is elaborated:^[683] we are told that it would take more than a hundred years for a rock to fall from the heavens; that the earth is like a tiny star in comparison with the immensity of the cosmos and is one hundred and sixty-six and three-twentieths times smaller than the sun.^[684] John of Holywood quoted Alfraganus (Al-Farghānī) to the effect that the smallest fixed star is larger than the earth^[685] but that the dimensions of such a star are as but a point in the firmament. He argued that the extreme smallness of the earth is proved by the fact that it is possible to see the middle of the firmament (medietas firmamenti) not only from the center of the earth but also from the earth’s surface.^[686] His argument, which certainly proves nothing as it stands, is evidently a confused reflection of Ptolemy’s reasoning in the Almagest.^[687]

As to the actual size of our planet various figures were occasionally quoted. The De imagine mundi^[688] gives Posidonius’ estimate of the circumference as 180,000 stades, or 12,052 miles (duodecies mille millaria et quinquaginta duo). The Image du monde,^[689] however, gives 20,428 miles. Eratosthenes’ 252,000 stades appears in Lambert of St. Omer’s Liber floridus^[690] and John of Holywood’s De sphaera.^[691] In the latter work it is cited on the authority of Ambrose, Macrobius, “et Eristenis philosophorum,” along with a brief account of the great Alexandrian geographer’s method of measurement.

The surface of the terrestrial sphere, surrounded as it is by the heavens, is naturally subjected directly to the influence of the heavenly bodies. We must now examine those general phenomena of the globe as a whole which were conceived to be consequences of the earth’s shape and position in relation to the remainder of the universe, postponing for a later chapter the study of the more local features of the oikoumene (or habited quarter), which also result from the same circumstances.

Zones

The most primitive observation reveals the fact that the heavenly bodies in their course through the sky revolve around two points and mark out certain circles. Very elaborate and often admirable discussions of the celestial poles, Arctic and Antarctic circles, equator, tropics, and ecliptic, are to be found in the numerous astrological and astronomical works of our period.^[692] The study of these matters was already a highly developed science, but except in its geographical bearing it does not fall within our province.

We saw in Chapter I that ancient astronomers had drawn imaginary circles around the terrestrial sphere corresponding to the circles of the heavens and had designated these lines as the boundaries of zones on the earth’s surface.^[693] The classical theory of five zones, divided from each other by parallels of latitude, was accepted by the geographical writers of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, although, as in classical times, opinions diverged widely regarding the characteristics of each zone. All, however, believed that the two polar caps were cold and that the equatorial regions were hot. For example Bernard Sylvester says in his De mundi universitate:^[694] Nous, or Providence, “encompassed the earth with five parallels; on the one hand the extremes are frozen, on the other the central portions are hot. Also she made temperate two zones by placing on both sides of them the coldness of the extremities and the course of the sun over the midst of the earth.”

Furthermore, a widely prevalent but not universal theory made the polar caps and equatorial zones not only cold and hot but also uninhabitable. The author of the De imagine mundi^[695] and Gervase of Tilbury^[696] plagiarized what Isidore had written on this subject.^[697] They called the five circles separating the zones and the zones themselves from north to south, respectively, septentrionalis (our Arctic Circle and North Polar zone), solstitialis (our Tropic of Cancer and North Temperate zone), equinoctialis (our Equator and Torrid zone), brumalis—or hyemalis according to Gervase—(our Tropic of Capricorn and South Temperate zone), and finally australis (our Antarctic Circle and South Polar zone). Of these they thought that only solstitialis was habitable. William of Conches likewise believed^[698] in uninhabitable torrid and frigid zones, though he rejected the theory that in the heavens above the sphere of the moon there are qualities of heat and cold corresponding to those of the terrestrial zones.

Austral Continent and Antipodal Regions

Speculation was rife as to what lay beyond the equatorial zone and in those mysterious parts of the earth of which man had no knowledge. Rumors and conjectures of an austral continent and of antipodal regions figure widely in the geographical literature of the age. A fourth continent beyond the equatorial ocean (or Mare Rubrum) is shown on all the Beatus maps. It is represented as a strip of land along the southernmost edge of the earth (see Figs. 2 and 4, pp. 69 and 123, above). A legend, taken from Isidore, informs us on the St. Sever map that “In addition to the three parts of the world, there is a fourth part beyond the ocean in the midst of the south and unknown to us on account of the heat of the sun. Within its confines the antipodeans are fabulously said to dwell.”^[699] The Osma Beatus map locates the skiapodes, or sun-shade-footed men, here (see Fig. 4). Confusion between true antipodal regions on the opposite side of the world and an austral continent lying south of the equator was not uncommon in antiquity and during the Middle Ages.^[700] Belief in the latter did not necessarily involve belief in a spherical earth, and it has 158been argued that the Roman cartographers (whose maps may have inspired Beatus) showed such a fourth continent south of the equator, even though they did not deem the question of the sphericity of the world worthy of serious consideration. The Beatus maps themselves may easily be reconciled with an implicit belief in a flat world disk.

While this may be true of the Beatus maps, it cannot be said of the mappamundi of Lambert of St. Omer or of references to the antipodes elsewhere in the literature of our period where it is impossible to question the conviction in the cartographers’ or writers’ minds that the earth is a sphere.

On Lambert’s map the austral continent occupies half of the circle of the earth. A long legend explains,^[701] in terms similar to those of the St. Sever Beatus map, that this region is unknown to mankind because of the sun’s heat; that philosophers say the antipodeans dwell here; and that winter prevails during our summer. In addition to the austral continent, Lambert indicates without a shadow of doubt his faith in the existence of other antipodal regions. A large island on the western margin of his map is labeled, “Here dwell the antipodeans, but they have a different night and opposite days.”^[702] We know from other parts of the Liber floridus that Lambert was strongly influenced by Macrobius. A Macrobian sketch of a spherical world showing the five zones is inserted in the Ghent and other manuscripts. This reference to the antipodes can only apply to the unknown regions on the opposite side of the globe, beyond the meridional ocean which, as we have seen in Chapter I, had been described by Crates of Mallos and popularized in Macrobius’ In somnium Scipionis commentarius and in Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii. Belief in a spherical world is essential to belief in these theories.

The Cratesian Theory

Crates of Mallos’ conception of the arrangement of the world, introduced to Western knowledge through the works of Macrobius and Capella, was well known in our period. William of Conches, Adelard of Bath, and Bernard Sylvester all show the influence of the Crates-Macrobian system in their belief in a great equatorial 159ocean.^[703] Giraldus Cambrensis and the author of the De imagine mundi, by their explanation of the causes of the tides, make it plain that they accepted the same opinion. Geoffrey of St. Victor gives a clear exposition of it in his Microcosmus.^[704] Robert Grosseteste adopts it in his De sphaera, explaining carefully the two seas that encircle the earth and calling the equatorial sea “Occeanus” and that which includes the poles “Amphitrites.” He believed that only one of the areas of land separated by these seas is inhabited.^[705] The same idea is reflected in words of the Image du monde^[706] to the effect that only a quarter of the earth’s surface is inhabited and in the recommendation to the reader in his imagination to cut the globe into four quarters like an apple and to think of the habitable part as occupying the surface of one of the quarters. Godfrey of Viterbo points out the significance of the golden ball of empire which formed part of the regal insignia of the Holy Roman Emperors upon which, he said, the fourfold division of the lands of the earth’s surface was shown.^[707] Among the imperial treasures (Reichskleinodien) in Vienna the golden apple dating from the twelfth century is of this form. Two bands encircling the regal ball at right angles represent the Cratesian idea of oceans girdling the earth.^[708]

In one version of the legend of St. Brandan there is a curious passage where not only the possibility of antipodal regions is indicated but the pious necessity of belief in such regions.^[709] St. Brandan is here reported to have read in an old book that beneath this earth there is another world, where day prevails when it is night with us. Unable to accept such a story, Brandan burned the book in a fit of exasperation; and as a punishment for his incredulity God made him voyage nine years upon the seas. What the book was we are not informed, but perhaps we do not err in assuming that the poet had in mind a copy of the In somnium Scipionis commentarius or possibly the De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii.

Persistence of Belief That Antipodal Regions Were Inhabited

An essential feature of the theory as it had been expounded by Macrobius and Capella, however, was the insistence that the 160other three temperate areas are inhabited by races of men like our own. As belief in the existence of inhabitants in the antipodal regions rested in our period on the authority of Capella and Macrobius and was subjected to lively discussion and controversy, it is not out of place for us to observe what these two writers had actually said.

Capella, after briefly stating that three out of the five zones are uninhabitable on account of cold and heat, declared that the other two are tempered by a wind which encourages life.^[710] The inhabitants of the quarter south of us, beyond the equator, he called antoikoi; those of the quarter also in the southern hemisphere but beyond the north-south ocean, who have winter when we have summer, antichthones. Those in our own temperate zone beyond the ocean, who have the same summer and winter as ours but who have night when we have day, he called antipodes.^[711] No commerce or communication is possible between us and these other groups of human beings, nor between one group and any of the others. Macrobius set forth this theory in similar terms,^[712] expressly emphasizing the point that reason teaches us that the southern zone must be inhabited because its climate is temperate like ours. However, he added, it is not peopled by men like ourselves—Greeks, Romans, barbarians—nor shall we ever be able to learn what sort of men the inhabitants actually are.

Though, as we have seen, out-and-out belief in antipodeans was heretical during the epoch we are studying, there is plenty of evidence to show that the possibility of such a thing was an attractive subject of speculation. The legends on the Lambert maps to which reference has been made above would alone be sufficient to convince us of this. William of Conches spoke very guardedly on the matter;^[713] his avowed theory was that the other temperate regions were habitable but not actually inhabited. But are we not justified in thinking that in denying the existence of antipodeans he was merely making a verbal concession to theological prejudice, especially when he went on to explain that, if there were people dwelling in other quarters, they would be called antoikoi, antipodes, and antichthones, and that some would have summer when we have winter, others night when we have day?

161Gervase of Tilbury relates a fanciful story which might be interpreted to show that he too liked to dally with the pleasing fancy that there may be antipodeans, even though elsewhere he rejects such a possibility. He tells of a cave in a mountain belonging to the domain of the castle of Bech in Great Britain.^[714] From this there nearly always blew a violent wind; but once, when the wind did not happen to be blowing, a swineherd entered the cave to look for a breeding sow which had wandered in. Here he found an open plain with cultivated lands and harvesters bringing in their crops, and from the harvesters he recovered his sow. To this Gervase adds, “It was an extraordinary circumstance that wintry coldness coming from these subterranean harvest fields seemed to penetrate into our hemisphere, which phenomenon I think ought to be attributed to the sun’s absence and presence elsewhere.”^[715]

Manegold’s Arguments Against This Doctrine

The most convincing proof of the persistence in the early twelfth century of a tendency to believe in antipodeans is furnished by the fact that Manegold in Alsace,^[716] sometime after 1103, saw fit to write a vigorous pamphlet attacking a certain Wolfelm of Cologne, whom he accused of harboring an heretical opinion. Manegold’s Contra Wolfelmum opusculum illustrates admirably the orthodox, or even obscurantist, point of view. He accused Wolfelm of adhering to Macrobius’ teachings about the four inhabited quarters of the earth. Granting that there are four such quarters, he demanded, how can the teachings of the Holy and Apostolic Church, buttressed by all the authority of the Fathers, the patriarchs, and the prophets from the earliest times, be true? And how can we believe the prophecies that the Savior will come to bring salvation to the entire human race, if these branches of the human race are cut off from the rest, as Macrobius would have it, by the zones and temperatures of the earth’s surface? How could the prophecy have been true, “All the ends of the earth will bow down before our God (salutare Dei nostri), if certain ends of the earth are inhabited by men to whom the voice of the prophets and the apostles could not reach through impassable tracts of water, of cold, and of heat?”^[717]

Macrobius’ theory was also contradicted from a position opposite to that of the orthodox churchmen. The study of Moslem astronomy brought to Europe the opinion that the equatorial zone itself was not only habitable but actually inhabited. In the preamble to the Marseilles Tables^[718] of Raymond of Marseilles, which reproduces ideas expressed by the Spanish-Moslem astronomer Az-Zarqalī, we have an explanation of the current theory among “philosophers” of the uninhabitability of the polar and equatorial regions. The latter the author of the treatise refuses to believe because the city of Arin and the temple of “Jupiter Arenosus” are both known to lie within the equatorial zone. He proceeds then to explain why it is physically possible for the regions beyond the equator to be inhabited.

Peter Alphonsi,^[719] also influenced by Arabic reasoning, argued that the existence of Arin on the equator was sufficient evidence of the habitability of the equatorial regions and gave a glowing account of the temperate climate and attractions of those parts of the world. Man can live throughout the entire area covered by the seven climates, he maintained, and, as his interpretation of ancient authorities led him to suppose that the first climate began at the equator, he was convinced that the equator also would support human life. On the other hand, he did not agree with the preamble to the Marseilles Tables, for he maintained that the parts of the earth in the southern hemisphere beyond Arin were not habitable. This was because the sun, on account of the eccentricity of its orbit, approaches much nearer the earth in those climes than it does in more northern latitudes. In this way he accounted for the excessive cold of the Arctic and polar regions and a (supposed) excessive heat of the trans-equatorial zones.

Plato of Tivoli’s translation of Al-Battānī’s work brought to Western knowledge another Arabic discussion of the probable characteristics of the areas of the earth’s surface unknown to man.^[720] As to the equator, Al-Battānī said, it was uncertain whether men had actually been there or not. The climate, however, could not be excessively hot, because the sun in crossing the zenith, as it does twice a year between the tropics, does not remain 163directly overhead very long. Al-Battānī saw no reason why winters and summers should not be temperate in countries along the equator and believed that these latitudes must have, in fact, a climate not greatly unlike that of Aden and Yemen, which, however hot it may seem to the European, apparently did not impress the Arabs by its torridity. The unknown districts of the world, Al-Battānī went on to explain, comprise eleven-twelfths of the whole. Though no man had ever reached them, he thought it not irrational to suppose that they were like the known parts, for the sun and stars must pass across them and produce in the same way winter and summer, the tides of the sea, and animal and vegetable life.

Grosseteste on the Habitable Parts of the Earth

When we come to the close of our period, we find that Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, and after him his more famous pupil Roger Bacon, like Peter Alphonsi, took over from the Moslems much geographical and astronomical lore which they interpreted and freely criticized.

In a book entitled De lineis angulis et figuris Grosseteste elaborated some general principles relating to the incidence and reflection of rays from celestial bodies. The De natura locorum is an attempt to show how far these principles may be used to account for various phenomena of the earth’s surface. Grosseteste conceived of celestial rays and influences as emanating in an infinite number of cones, or “pyramids,” as he called them, the apexes of which were the celestial bodies; the longer and more oblique these pyramids, the weaker the effect of the rays upon the earth’s surface and vice versa.^[721]

Let us see how Robert applied the principle of the pyramids to explain conditions in the equatorial zone, in the southern hemisphere, and in the polar regions.

The Equatorial Zone

Logically the equatorial zone should be scorched and burnt by the sun because the pyramids are there the shortest and the angles at which the rays reach the earth approach nearest to a right 164angle. As a matter of fact, Robert had it on the authority of Ptolemy and Avicenna that, whereas the subtropical regions are intensely hot, the subequatorial zone is not only temperate but extremely temperate (temperatissimus); indeed, he said, theologians place Paradise under the equator in the Orient. A modification of the principle of the pyramids was therefore necessary. In his readiness to admit such modifications of rules that he had laid down, Robert showed an open-minded and a scientific spirit. In order to allow for the circumstance of a supposedly temperate equatorial region, he stated that the heat received during the daytime must be neutralized by the coolness of the nights, since day and night between the tropics are always approximately the same length, as they are in the latitudes of Europe during spring and autumn only.^[722]

The Southern Hemisphere

The southern hemisphere, on the other hand, Robert thought to be uninhabitable on account of the intense heat of summer and bitter cold of winter. The excessive heat he ascribed to the fact that the eccentricity of the solar orbit around the earth brings the sun no less than five degrees nearer the earth during the southern summer than it approaches during the northern summer.^[723] The pyramids, or lines of heat radiation, are therefore shorter and the heat is more intense.^[724] Conversely the southern winter must be colder than that of the north because the sun at that season is farthest from the earth.

Granting a geocentric universe, this reasoning was sound though its consequences were exaggerated. It is quite true that the earth is nearer the sun in the summer of the southern than in the summer of the northern hemisphere, yet no extreme results flow from this circumstance, and there is no great difference in the amount of heat received by each hemisphere.^[725]

An exaggerated idea of the differences in temperatures north and south of the equator led Robert,^[726] and after him Roger Bacon,^[727] to doubt the validity of the theory of the precession of the equinoxes. This phenomenon would inevitably produce a gradual shifting of the climatic conditions of the southern hemisphere to the northern, and, as a result, the latter would presumably 165in the course of time become uninhabitable. Since this seemed incredible to Grosseteste and Bacon, they were impelled to deny the possibility of its cause.

The Polar Regions

In discussing the climate and habitability of the polar regions,^[728] Robert cites a work, De vegetabilibus (erroneously ascribed to Aristotle in the Middle Ages) and a commentary upon it. Here the extraordinary view was expressed that no plants or animals could survive in the polar zone because the heat of the sun would burn them up! This view originated in the known fact that the sun shines continuously for half the year at the pole and at no time sinks very far below the horizon. The commentator pointed out that the sun never retires more than 23° out of sight and that it is capable of illuminating and heating the atmosphere at 18° below the horizon. The theory, however, failed to take into account the very important fact that the sun’s rays reach the polar regions at a sharply oblique angle and that consequently their powers of generating heat are limited. This circumstance together with the “observations and reasoning of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and other authorities” led the Bishop of Lincoln conclusively to reject the singular theory of the De vegetabilibus and to attribute to the polar zones a climate that, in so far as it was dependent upon the disposition of the heavens, rendered these regions uninhabitable on account of the cold. Nevertheless, he recognized that there might be accidental local conditions, such as the presence of mountains of peculiar shape, capable in the polar regions of producing areas of intense heat or of delightfully temperate climate. But to this subject we shall revert in a later section devoted to the influence of mountains on climate.^[729]

At the present time we divide the study of the atmosphere into the sciences of meteorology, devoted to the investigation of individual and local atmospheric phenomena, and climatology, devoted to the investigation of the geographical distribution of weather conditions throughout the world as observed during long periods of time. We may make the same arbitrary division in dealing with the theories current in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Meteorology and climatology, however, merge into each other. Some understanding of one is absolutely essential to an understanding of the other, and hence we must take certain meteorological theories into consideration before attempting to deal with the more truly geographic subject of climatology.

Probably the most complete and satisfactory extant treatment of meteorology from our period is to be found in the writings of William of Conches, whose interest in physics and in the natural sciences led him to study carefully the views of Seneca and also to express at great length opinions of his own about the atmosphere.^[730]

Composition of the Atmosphere

In the first place, William had very definite ideas concerning the composition of the air. The aerial and aqueous spheres, he said, act as intermediaries between the spheres of fire and earth.^[731] The qualities of the two latter are opposite; but the atmosphere partakes more or less of the qualities of each, for neither sphere is made up exclusively of one element. William was an atomist: he thought that matter is composed of minute atoms and that each atom is the smallest conceivable particle of one of the four elements.^[732] He explained that the atmosphere, which extends up as far as the moon’s orbit, contains in addition to the aerial 167atoms a certain number of aqueous particles in its lower levels and of fiery atoms higher up. Hence its density and humidity decrease progressively from the earth’s surface upward; the higher air is clear and lucid, the abode of good demons or angels, messengers of God to man, whereas the lower air is full of clouds and constitutes the abode of evil spirits.^[733]

These parts of the atmosphere formed two out of five concentric regions into which William divided the entire universe.^[734]

Temperature

With much acuteness of observation, William recognized the fact that the sun’s influence on the denser air of low altitudes is far more potent than it is on the rarer strata above.^[735] Though heat comes from the sun, he said, it is not apparent until it becomes mingled with humidity. In valleys the air, lying stagnant and damp, is easily heated, whereas the dry upper levels remain cold even though the sun’s warmth passes through them. The presence of this coldness explains why snow is found on the summits of the highest mountains, for the belief that mountain snow is due to cold north winds William branded as false, observing that snow often occurs on the south as well as on the north sides of the peaks. Robert Grosseteste also held that the air at high altitudes is much colder than it is near the surface.^[736] This, he said, was because the heating effect of the sun’s rays is inoperative on account of the transparency of the medium. At the surface heating takes place as a result of reflection and condensation of the solar rays.^[737] The cold air at high levels explains the origin of perpetual snow on mountain tops. Hail is generated in these strata, rain at lower levels. Robert cited as proof of this the fact that birds of prey fly high in summer to cool off and that cranes and many other birds descend into the valleys to escape the icy chill but fly up the mountain sides to avoid the heat.^[738]

Upper Levels of the Atmosphere

In contrast with these opinions of William of Conches and Robert Grosseteste, which were based apparently on more or less direct observation, we find echoes in our period of a doctrine 168that had its roots in classical mythology—the doctrine that above a certain height on mountain peaks the air is undisturbed by wind and unsullied by clouds.^[739] Hermann the Dalmatian hints at this in his Liber de essentiis. In the course of a discussion of the dimensions of the habitable area of the earth’s surface that had probably been suggested by the reading of Arabic works he explains that the living offspring of the earth require for the maintenance of life a certain heavy, “greasy” terrestrial vapor which, “as Aristotle determined from the height of Olympus, does not rise more than sixteen stades above the earth’s surface. Here consequently would seem to be the upper limit of our habitable zone. Possibly this might be measured by means of the rainbow, which, according to the description of Hipparchus, reaches from the clouds themselves down to the surface of the earth. But since Hipparchus’ description is not accurate nor is the figure of the rainbow a semicircle, we leave the matter for whosoever may wish to prove it.”^[740] Peter Alphonsi, who was also influenced by Moslem thought, placed the upper limit of the clouds at sixteen miles,^[741] a figure which may have been derived from the same origin as Hermann’s sixteen stades. Peter Comestor inserted in his Historia scholastica some observations in regard to the tranquillity of the summit of Mount Olympus and the physiological effects of the rarity of the atmosphere.^[742] So quiet and untroubled by winds is this peak that letters written there in the dust remain legible for a year. The air is too thin even to support the life of birds, and several philosophers who climbed the mountain would have been unable to remain on top if they had not held to their faces sponges soaked with water and in this way made it possible to breathe by attracting denser air to their nostrils.^[743]

Clouds

In this connection a puzzling question seems to have occurred to William of Conches. If the general rule holds that the atmosphere is rarer higher up than on the earth’s surface, how then does it happen that the upper air so often becomes dense in the form of clouds? To this William gave the correct answer,^[744] that 169clouds are not composed of air of greater density than the surrounding parts of the atmosphere, but that water vapor arising from below is turned into clouds by the cold. True as it may be, this idea does not fit in very well with William’s theory of the coldness of the higher altitudes. First he maintains that one of the main reasons why the upper air is cold is because it lacks dampness; then he goes on to explain that dampness rising to a great elevation is converted by the cold into clouds. Though there is no direct contradiction of two statements here, one cannot but sense inconsistency and looseness of thought of a sort that pervades all medieval natural science, though William of Conches on the whole was rather less illogical and less inconsistent than most of his contemporaries.

Much the same explanation of the effects of cold on the condensation of water vapor is found in the Dialogus of Peter Alphonsi,^[745] where it is shown that the sun draws a damp vapor from the sea and a dry humor from the land. Out of a combination of these, clouds are formed which rise until they reach a height of about sixteen miles. Here, coming in contact with strata of cold air, they are prevented from ascending any higher, and the damp vapor may be precipitated in the form of rain.

Precipitation

William of Conches also endeavored to explain rainfall.^[746] This phenomenon may result, he said, from various causes: either from the conversion into drops of water of dense vapors arising from the earth, from the actual transformation of air into water through the influence of cold, from the tumbling back to earth of some of the water which the sun raises to itself for its own nourishment,^[747] or, finally, from water swept up by the winds off the surface of streams, lakes, and swamps. That the last was possible he believed to be demonstrated by the fact that frogs sometimes fall with raindrops!^[748]

Theodoric of Chartres gives a clear statement^[749] of the theory of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation in terms that sound almost modern. Heat, he says, causes water to ascend into the atmosphere in minute drops which form clouds. If the 170heat increases, these droplets turn to pure air; if it diminishes, they coalesce into rain. The most minute drops are constricted by a cold wind into snow; when the drops are large they are converted into hail by the same agency.^[750]

Topographic influences on precipitation were partially understood by Giraldus Cambrensis, who believed that the influence of land—particularly hilly land—frequently tends to change the vapors of the air into mists and clouds, or rain and snow.^[751] In the seas off Ireland, for instance, water is attracted into the atmosphere in immense quantities; the temperature being equable, the water is neither consumed by an excess of heat nor turned to snow by an excess of cold but is altered into rain, a process greatly facilitated by the presence of many mountains in Ireland.

Floods; The Deluge

An excess of rainfall results in floods. William of Conches believed that under normal conditions the warmth of summer counteracts the excessive dampness of winter but that a long series of cool, damp summers will end in floods and, conversely, a series of hot, dry summers will end in droughts. But, however many local floods there may be, only one diluvium, or deluge, is possible.^[752]

Whence came the waters of the Deluge? This was a question which puzzled some of the commentators on Scripture during the Middle Ages. Adelard, though he did not believe it himself, cited a theory that the purpose of the waters above the firmament was to furnish these waters.^[753] Peter Comestor,^[754] followed by Gervase of Tilbury,^[755] said that they came partly from the bowels of the earth and partly from the air above and that they rose higher than the tops of the mountains of today,^[756] to the level to which the vapors of burnt offerings ascend. Gervase also spoke of a curious theory that there may have been no rain in Paradise nor anywhere on the earth until the time of the Deluge.^[757] The vegetation in the Garden was watered in these early days by the heavenly dew. The argument that no rain fell until the Deluge was based, he said, on the words of God to Noah: “I 171will no more curse the earth for the sake of men; ... seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day shall not cease” (Gen. viii, 21–22). Gervase adds: “Perhaps the four seasons were not yet fully distinguished one from the other, since not until the time of the Deluge were the waters gathered into clouds.”^[758] According to the Liber divinorum operum of Hildegard the temperature was far hotter before the Deluge than it has been since, and “the men of that time possessed great bodily strength in order that they might endure this heat. The Deluge reduced the temperature, and men since have been weaker” (Thorndike).^[759]

Winds

The winds interested the men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries even more than rainfall. Popular notions of winds, rain, and storms as manifestations of magical powers or evil spirits,^[760] though universally believed among the unlearned, were not given serious consideration by the majority of scholars. Isidore, Bede, Raban Maur, and those who copied from them during our period—the author of the De imagine mundi^[761] and Gervase of Tilbury in his Otia imperialia—defined wind as air in a disturbed and agitated condition,^[762] Adelard of Bath said it was dense air moving in a particular direction,^[763] and William of Conches used Seneca’s definition, “Wind is air flowing one way.”^[764]

Hildegard of Bingen made the winds play a supremely important part in the dynamics and physics of the universe. To the winds she ascribed the movement of the firmament from east to west and of the planets from west to east.^[765] Were it not for the winds, she said, the fires of the south, the waters of the west, the shadows of the north would burst forth over the earth. The four winds are the wings of God’s power; were they to move forward at once all the elements would be confounded and split asunder, and they would shake the sea and dry up its waters.^[766] As the body of man is held together by the soul, so the whole firmament is kept intact by the winds lest it be corrupted; and the winds are invisible like the soul, which comes from the mystery of God^[767] (see Fig. 5, p. 149).

172What causes the wind? William of Conches made one of the most elaborate attempts in many centuries to answer this,^[768] for, though borrowing largely from Seneca, he added some significant observations of his own. In the first place he argued that local winds are produced by various local causes, as, for instance, when air enters a cavern, on account of its labilitas, or fluidity, it tends to force out the air already there and thus to make a commotion which generates wind. We may be allowed to suppose here that William has in mind a cavern with two entrances, for it is difficult to understand how such an effect could be produced in a cavern with only one. Similarly, William thought that waters entering the hollows of the earth tend to force out the vapors therein contained and thus to produce blasts and even earthquakes. A damp vapor in rising might cause a wind to blow on account of the removal of its weight (ex ponderatione sua). William borrowed the idea that winds may result from the destruction and flattening out of clouds directly from the ἐκνέφτα, or “cloud breezes,” of Aristotle and Seneca. Adelard of Bath also attributed the origin of certain winds to local exhalations of vapors off the surface of land and water. “Marshes and valleys give up a great deal of dense air, which in the natural course of things rises upward; further, when they are loosened, they give back to its natural position much moisture of water which they had previously held imprisoned; add to this that I do not exclude from my statement the actual air which is the content of earth” (Gollancz’s translation).^[769]

Atmospheric Circulation

The most original theory of the winds was not any of those which attempted to account for purely local breezes but an explanation propounded by William of Conches of the circulation of the atmosphere as a whole. Unlike our modern conceptions of atmospheric circulation based on the observation of facts, William’s ingenious theory seems to have been the product of his own vivid imagination. It was founded on a persistent idea, dating back to classical times, that disturbances in the water can produce currents of air. Gervase of Tilbury, for example, states in so many words that “mountains and water cause winds” and that the 173swift-flowing Rhone makes the mistral that blows over Provence and Dauphiny.^[770] William of Conches^[771] believed that there are two ocean currents trending east and west out of the equatorial ocean. Each of these was supposed to divide in two at the extremities of our oikoumene, making four currents which collide at the North and South Poles in the ocean perpendicular to the equatorial ring (Amphitrites). The cardinal winds are generated at four points, at the two junctions of the oceans where the currents divide and at the poles where they collide. The western division gives rise to Zephyr, the eastern to Eurus, the collision at the North Pole to Boreas, and the one at the South Pole to Auster. It may happen, however, that one of the currents will on occasion flow more strongly than its opponent and will push the point of collision beyond the pole. This displacement of the point of collision explains the blowing of the collateral winds. Absurd as it may be in itself, this theory is of interest to us mainly because it shows that William understood that a broad system of atmospheric circulation is possible and assigned to it, as well as to local breezes, a purely physical cause. Curiously enough, it is the exact reverse of our modern conception of the usual relation existing between atmospheric and ocean currents, for now we understand that the winds are more effective as the cause of the ocean currents than vice versa.

William also maintained, as we shall see later,^[772] that the tides are produced by the impact of ocean currents. Why then, it was asked, if the tides are of daily, periodic occurrence, do not the winds, which he tells us result from the same cause, show a similar periodicity? To this William replied^[773] that the winds in fact do show such regularity but that it is not apparent to us for two reasons: in the first place, wind produced by these causes does not always reach the part of the earth where we happen to be; and, secondly, the resulting wind may blow at such a high altitude as not to be noticed by men on the ground—an observation now well known to be true.

Names of the Winds

Classical names for the winds were almost universally employed. The distinction between cardinal and collateral which 174was made by William of Conches goes back to the Greeks,^[774] who had conceived of four cardinal and four, six, seven, or eight collateral winds. Seneca’s^[775] rose of twelve winds, the idea of which in its essentials had been derived from Posidonius, Timosthenes, and, ultimately, from Aristotle, was adopted by Isidore, who passed it on to the Middle Ages, though terrible confusion (which, happily, it is not necessary for us to unravel) reigned at all times regarding the names employed to designate its elements.^[776] In addition to the classical terms, our modern names were already familiar. In the Ghent manuscript of Lambert of St. Omer’s Liber floridus^[777] there is a diagram in which the winds are called “ost-ost,” “sud-ost,” “sud-sud,” “sud-west,” “west-west,” “nord-west,” “nord-nord,” and “nord-ost.” This terminology was used in the time of Charlemagne^[778] and is probably of Anglo-Saxon origin,^[779] although it has been suggested that the terms are corruptions of Latin words—“ost” from “Augustus;” “ovest,” or “west,” from “ob est;” “nord” from “novus arctus,” etc.^[780]

Qualities of the Winds

To the various winds classical and medieval writers liked to attribute qualities—or, at any rate, descriptive adjectives, “cold” or “hot,” “dry” or “damp,” “stormy” or “calm,” and the like—but there was little enough uniformity in making these distinctions. Some writers of our period seem to have been content merely to repeat what had been said in classical times; others, like William of Conches or Giraldus Cambrensis, showed more independence. Boreas was probably universally regarded as cold and Auster as hot, but beyond this we cannot generalize.^[781] William of Conches^[782] conceived of the winds as partaking of the qualities of the regions over which they blow: Auster, coming from the South Pole and hence originally frigid like Boreas, in its passage across the torrid, equatorial zone becomes hot and dry—an observation which may perhaps be founded on some knowledge of the sirocco of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, Giraldus Cambrensis, undoubtedly from personal acquaintance with the water-laden south and southwest gales of the British Isles, calls Auster damp and rainy in winter. Similarly Giraldus breaks with classical 175tradition when he speaks of the east wind, or Eurus, as pure and clear, a bringer of fair summer weather, strikingly different from Zephyr, wet and cloudy from the sea.^[783]

Local Winds

We find occasional descriptions—some of them from personal observation, no doubt—of winds peculiar to particular parts of the world. Gervase of Tilbury, as we have seen, tells of very violent blasts in the Rhone valley,^[784] supposedly generated by the current of the river in a region now famed for the furious mistral that sweeps across Dauphiny and Provence from the north. In another connection^[785] he tells of a valley in the Kingdom of Arles, once so shut in by precipitous mountains that no winds at all entered it and that it consequently was sterile and useless. In the time of Charlemagne, however, Caesarius, the archbishop of Arles, filled his glove with sea breezes and let them forth in the valley; thus originated a wind known as pontianum, which wrought an immediate change in the character of the place and caused it henceforth to become fertile and healthy. This wind was doubtless the breeze now called pontias that blows at Nyons in the Department of the Drôme; but as to its miraculous origin Gervase is merely repeating one of many popular medieval stories.^[786]

William of Tyre^[787] describes in vivid terms the simoom of the Arabian desert and how men have to lie flat on the ground at the time of its passing: equal to a storm at sea, it sweeps down upon the traveler waves of sand as huge as those of the sea and causes grave danger to persons who would cross the desert.

The most important factor in determining the atmospheric climate of any given region is the amount of sunlight and heat received. This, in turn, depends largely on geographical latitude. As we have already discussed the broad climatic divisions of the earth’s surface in zones, it remains here for us to deal merely with what was known of climatic conditions within the oikoumene.

Climatic differences between northerly and southerly latitudes were well understood. Classical writers had told of the coldness of the regions beyond Thule, and in the De imagine mundi^[788] we read that in those parts the sea is frozen and perpetual cold prevails. An interpolation into Solinus’ Collectanea rerum memorabilium dating perhaps from our period contains a vivid and possibly exaggerated description of the cold of Iceland: “These people also are good Christians, but in winter they dare not leave their underground holes on account of the terrible cold. For if they go out they are smitten by such terrible cold that they lose their color like lepers and swell up. If by chance they blow their nose, it comes off and they throw it away” (Nansen’s translation).^[789] Giraldus Cambrensis praises the temperate climate of Ireland, placed between the torrid warmth of Spain and the rigors of Iceland;^[790] and the chroniclers and historians of the Crusades give evidence of first-hand knowledge of the terrific summer heats in the Holy Land.^[791] Ambroise says, for example:

Benjamin of Tudela’s extensive travels made him familiar with countries of widely different climate. The peculiarities of some of these he notes briefly. Writing of Russia, for example, he remarks that “no one issues forth from his house in winter time on account of the cold. People are to be found there who have lost the tips of their noses by reason of the frost” (Adler’s translation).^[793] Similarly it was his belief that in Khulam (or Quilon) in southern India no one left his home all through the summer on account of the sun.^[794] A hint of the intensity of the Mesopotamian summer is given in a description of a hospital in Baghdad, which Benjamin had perhaps seen, “where they keep charge of the demented persons who have become insane through the great heat ... and they chain each of them with iron chains until their reason becomes restored to them in the winter time” (Adler’s translation).^[795]

William of Conches, in his usual manner, tried to generalize on climates. He said that our habitable portion of the earth’s surface is not of an even temperature throughout. The parts nearest the torrid zone, Ethiopia and Libya, are hot and dry; the northern parts near the frigid zone are cold and damp. Furthermore, though for us it is less easy to see exactly why, the West is cold and dry, and the East warm and damp. The symmetry of the system is perfect: climates vary in a direct ratio with distance, or, as William puts it, “Aequaliter vero distans, aequaliter est temperata.”^[796]

Climatic Differences Between East and West

Men were not so well agreed in the Middle Ages regarding differences of climate between East and West as regarding those between North and South. Bartholomew Anglicus^[797] believed the West to be cold and damp and the East hot and dry, an opinion unlike that of William of Conches in that it may well have been based on actual observation rather than on theory. Giraldus Cambrensis in the Topographia Hiberniae gives a long discourse^[798] on climatic and other differences between the Orient and Occident, in which his main contention is that, though the air is clearer, finer, and more “subtle” in the East, the stormy and damp climates of the West are better for the health. The true climate of the Orient—that is of the Levant—had been made known to the Occidental world through the Crusaders, who often dwelt with insistence on its disagreeable and injurious qualities, especially the heat, dust, and thirst of the Syrian summer, which dried cisterns and carried disease and death in its train. In the East, Giraldus says, everything threatens the traveler, and he writes a word of warning against doing many of those very things which the modern wanderer in the Levant knows to be imprudent: such as going uncovered, sitting on rocks, or overeating.^[799]

Topographic Influences Upon Climate

The Sea

During our period we find several descriptions of local climatic conditions and of variations due to topographic features like sea 178and mountains. A vivid impression of the wild marine weather of the North Atlantic off the coast of Ireland is given us in the narrative of St. Brandan’s wanderings. The saint and his companions were forced to remain three months on an island because of storms with furious gales, rain, and hail.^[800] Giraldus Cambrensis^[801] pictures the turbulent climate of Ireland, an isle surrounded by vast seas, unprotected and exposed to all the blasts. He was especially struck by the thick and rainy westerly gales, Zephyr and Corus, which bend over the trees in the seaward parts of the island. However violent the winds, Giraldus maintained that Ireland is the most temperate of all lands:^[802] snow there is infrequent and when it comes lasts but a short while. Though cold weather accompanies all the winds, it never becomes too cold, and green grass grows in the pastures at all times of year. Yet so constant is the dampness, so prevalent the rain and clouds, that a clear day is rare indeed.

Mountains

William of Conches speaks in general terms of the influence of mountains on climate. We have seen how he recognized the fact that the tops of mountains are colder than the valleys below.^[803] In another connection^[804] he explained that places cut off from the north winds by mountains have dry, warm conditions and are good for winter residence, though less desirable in summer. The opposite is true of places on the north sides. Similarly, places exposed to the east are warm and damp with a pleasant autumn but bad spring weather, and the converse is true of places with a western exposure. This systematic arrangement is deduced from William’s fundamental and oversymmetrical conception of the various climatic characteristics of the cardinal points of the compass.

Gunther of Pairis, in his Ligurinus,^[805] embellishes a description of the mountain ranges of Italy with an imaginative discourse on how they influence the climate: the Apennines temper the moist, summer heat of the south wind, and the crags of the Alps cut off the cold northerly gales of Boreas and Arctos. Giraldus Cambrensis says^[806] that Ireland, like all other mountainous districts, produces an abundance of rain. In the Itinerarium Kambriae^[807] 179he explains that the lake of Brecknock (Llangorse) in Wales is encircled north, west, and south by high mountains. The great range of Cader Arthur to the south, by cutting off the rays of the sun, renders the climate in the vicinity of the lake both pleasant and healthy. The valley of Ewyas, completely surrounded by mountains (now the Black Mountains), is constantly the resting place of clouds, strong gales, and rain, which make it, in Giraldus’ opinion, an extremely healthful locality.^[808]

We cannot leave this subject without alluding again to the theoretical discussion of the influence of mountains on the climate of the polar regions that is found in that most interesting treatise of Robert Grosseteste, the De natura locorum. The bishop of Lincoln recognized the fact that insolation is greatly reduced in high latitudes owing to the obliquity of the sun’s rays and that the climate normally should be too cold to sustain life. He believed, however, that the presence of very high mountains, Rhipaean, Hyperborean, and others to which the authorities referred, might totally neutralize the effects of position in relation to the sun’s rays. “Some of these mountains,” he wrote,^[809] “are smooth of surface, like the salt or rock hills that are found in many places, and others are in the nature of crystal, as divers authors and explorers testify, so that the reflection from them is good. As a result of this they are able to cause the rays all to converge and to produce a powerful effect. From these two accidental causes, that is from the smoothness of the mountains and from their concave shape, there is an intense heating of the air in certain regions around the pole. The great height of some of these mountains also cuts off the cold of the north, and thus certain localities may well be intensely hot.” On the other hand, Grosseteste had learned from Capella, Pliny, Solinus, and “many others who describe the regions of the world that in the Hyperborean Mountains next to the pole there are men who are called Hyperboreans from these mountains. And they enjoy the most temperate and healthy of climates and as a result live to such an age that they grow tired of life and without other cause throw themselves off of high rocks into the sea and die. The cause of this may be assigned to the form of the mountains beneath which 180they dwell, inasmuch as these mountains are smooth and of even surface, nor are they concave but are elongated (oblongam) and convex or of some other shape which does not concentrate the heat in those regions but on the contrary renders the climate temperate.”^[810]

Influence of Climate on Man

In the literature of our period we find several observations about the influence of climate on man. Gervase of Tilbury^[811] maintained that the character of the different European peoples varies with varying climatic conditions. “According to the diversities of the air the Romans are grave, the Greeks fickle and unreliable, the Africans sly and crafty, the Gauls fierce, and the English and Teutons powerful and robust.”

In another connection^[812] he explains that the violent mistral of the Rhone valley generates in this region men who are windy, empty-headed, inconsistent, and most unreliable in their promises. The supposedly mollifying influence of a warmer climate on the Lombards is hinted at by Otto of Freising.^[813] Otto believed that these tribes gave up their ferocity on settling in Italy, where they adopted Italian customs, partly because they married Italian women but partly also because of the nature of the country and climate (ex terris aerisve). We have already seen how Giraldus Cambrensis stressed the healthy qualities of damp and humid Ireland in contrast with the disease-breeding Orient. Even the most delicate persons thrive in Ireland, he said, and though the Eastern air may endow men with keener wits and intelligence, the West gives them stronger bodies and a more martial spirit.^[814]

Climate of Rome

If we may believe Otto of Freising^[815] and Gunther of Pairis,^[816] the climate of Rome was even more noxious and dangerous in the twelfth than in the nineteenth century. Otto tells us that Frederick Barbarossa’s army arrived in Rome in midsummer when the Dog Star was on high. It was a time when the ponds, caverns, and ruinous places around the city were exhaling poisonous vapors, 181and the air in the entire vicinity had become densely laden with pestilence and death. Gunther enlarges on this, giving a circumstantial, though probably fanciful, account of the effects of the terrible Roman summer on the German army, especially of the disease and malaria engendered by the climate and foul condition of the city.^[817]

Rationalistic Beliefs

“And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament” (Gen. i, 7).

We saw in Chapter II that this text had induced many of the earlier Church Fathers to devise strange theories about the waters above the firmament. The idea of Jerome, Josephus, Ambrose, Isidore, and Bede that these waters were in crystalline, or frozen, form met with opposition from those who were influenced by classical science and especially by the writings of Aristotle. Abelard in his Expositio in hexaemeron^[818] discussed in considerable detail various opinions about the existence of solidified water above the firmament, though personally he was inclined to think that the air sustains the water in the form of very fine drops. That much heavier objects may sometimes be supported by air or water he proved by citing examples of cases where this is actually known to happen, as where a needle may be made to float on water. Theodoric of Chartres and William of Conches approached the problem from an even more rationalistic standpoint. Theodoric^[819] held that water, when subjected to sufficient heat, turns into “pure air.” On the second day of the Creation the fire element heated the water element in such a way that large portions of the latter rose as high as the moon and were there suspended in vaporous form “above the top of the sky” (super summam coeli). As a result the atmosphere became intercalated between the liquid water of the earth’s surface and this water vapor above the firmament. The firmament itself, Theodoric contended, was merely the air and was so called either because it “firmly” supported that which was above it and enclosed that which was below it or else because it “firmly” 183gripped the earth on all sides. William of Conches also argued against the possibility of frozen water above the firmament.^[820] This, he declared, is quite contrary to reason: frozen water is solid and heavy, and the place for solid and heavy substances in the constitution of the universe is either on or beneath the earth’s surface. Then again, water in or near the celestial sphere—which is the abode of fire—would either extinguish the fire or else itself be consumed. William objected to juggling with the Aristotelian laws of physics. He explained the Biblical text by asserting that the firmament is the atmosphere and that the waters “above” it are in reality nothing more than the clouds within it.^[821] On the whole, he concluded that the text should be interpreted allegorically rather than literally.

Literal Beliefs

In decided contrast with these more or less rationalistic theories was Michael Scot’s bold assertion that beyond the realm of fire and above the eighth heavenly sphere comes a “multitude of waters,”^[822] or Gervase of Tilbury’s extraordinary account of a sea either in or above the atmosphere. To prove the existence of such a sea Gervase told^[823] how “in his time some people coming out of a church in England found an anchor let down by a rope out of the heavens, how there came voices from sailors above trying to loose the anchor, and, finally, how a sailor came down the rope, who, on reaching the earth, died as if drowned in water” (White).^[824] William of Auvergne, Platonist of the early thirteenth century and staunch opponent of Aristotelianism, also found no difficulties in the way of literal belief in the waters above the firmament. Ignoring the arguments of Peripatetic physics, he wrote:^[825] “Nobody in the world is either amazed or horrified at the presence of fire beneath the waters and more especially beneath the earth. This is proved to the eye by the fiery outbreaks from three mountains (that is Vulcano, Etna, and Chimaera). Why then should one wonder so much that water is found above the heavens?”

Hildegard of Bingen gave expression to some views, probably original with her, regarding the waters above the firmament. 184In the Causae et curae she speaks of “the waters of the great sea which surrounds the world and forms as it were a flank to those waters which are above the firmament, because the height (summitas) of those which are above and the extreme edge (extremitas) of those which are below the firmament are mutually joined together.”^[826] In the Solutiones she characterized the celestial waters, asserting that they neither increase nor decrease (implying perhaps that they are disturbed by no tides) but that they have remained just as they are now since God created them. They are unlike the waters of the earth inasmuch as they are far more fine in texture and entirely invisible to human eyes.^[827]

Purpose of the Waters

What purpose is served by the waters above the firmament? Gervase of Tilbury declared that they supply the earth with dew.^[828] Abelard said that there were two opinions on this subject.^[829] The first was that the waters were originally placed in the heavens in order to be used in the Deluge. To this he was opposed, because the Psalms show that the waters were still in existence in David’s time, long after the Flood. If there had not been waters above the firmament in David’s time, how could the latter have sung: “Praise ye the Lord ... ye heavens of heavens and let all the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord”?^[830] Abelard was more inclined to favor the second theory, that the waters were intended to temper the heat of the upper celestial fires. He felt, however, with more or less reason, that this entire problem presents great, if not insoluble, difficulties.

There is an abundance of evidence that the authority of the Bible was invoked to support a theory that the waters beneath the firmament must constitute one unit, or “congregation of waters.” This view, as we saw in Chapter II, was based on the assertion in Genesis that God “gathered together the waters in one place.” Peter Abelard,^[831] Peter Comestor,^[832] and Hugh of 185St. Victor^[833] all maintained that there are great subterranean reservoirs connected with the seas and rivers of the surface in such a way that the whole hydrographic system of the earth forms a single unit. Prior to the action of God in gathering them together these waters in the primordial chaos were supposed to have been disseminated in the form of vapor, which took up vastly more room than the liquid into which God’s power later concentrated them.

Connection Between Seas and Rivers

That many writers believed in the connection between the seas and the rivers and in the consequent unity of the waters is shown by numerous passages. Medieval thinkers, as we have seen, were constantly preoccupied by the doctrine of the microcosm, the theory that the human body includes all the elements which constitute the universe and is indeed in itself a miniature replica of the universe. This appears in a statement in the De imagine mundi that the whole interior of the earth is filled with channels like the blood vessels that permeate the body.^[834] Whenever and wherever a man digs into the ground he is sure to find water. A constant circulation is maintained between the ocean and the waters of the surface of the land through these passages and through the air.^[835]

William of Conches held that the great ocean in the equatorial zone is the source of all dampness in the earth (fons humoris) and that the land is seamed with canals full of water derived from that source.^[836] Peter Alphonsi describes the circulation of the waters from the sea into the atmosphere by evaporation, thence in the form of rain to the rivers, and so back to the sea.^[837] Peter Comestor, however, held that the river which springs from Paradise and divides in four is the source of all the water of the earth;^[838] and Gervase of Tilbury, who follows Comestor in this respect, mentions in another connection that springs have their sources in the sea.^[839] Perhaps if he had analyzed the question he would have said that the waters of the sea must find their way at some time through the rivers of Paradise and thence to the springs.

The phrase in the Psalms, that God established the earth above or on (super) the waters,^[840] also proved puzzling to the thinkers of our period. The easy explanation that such a phenomenon might be due to the arbitrary working of God’s will was not always readily accepted. Some commentators on the Psalms observed dubiously that it surpassed their understanding.^[841] Alexander Neckam stated that it might possibly refer to waters beneath the earth, since “Alfraganus [Al-Farghānī] says that the sphere of the waters and of the earth are one.” Saints who had expounded the phrase, he added, tried to explain away the difficulty by referring to the colloquial manner of saying that Paris is founded “on the Seine.” “The truth of the matter, however, is that the terrestrial paradise is above the waters, since it is above the sphere of the moon.”^[842] An allegorical interpretation was also resorted to, and the reader was told to conceive of “earth” as being the Church and “the waters” as the many peoples upon which the Church is founded.

Peter Abelard, in an interesting passage in the Expositio in hexaemeron,^[843] gave an interpretation of this phrase as well as of the text about the “congregation of the waters” which seems to foreshadow a theory later to be elaborated by Brunetto Latino and destined to gain a firm grip on the hydrographical conceptions of many individuals until as late as the eighteenth century. Abelard wrote: “When the waters receded into one part of the earth, the other parts were uncovered, as was written: ‘God, who established the earth on the waters.’ As any globe may be immersed in water in such a way that one part of it rises above the water, even so the globe of the earth rests in the waters so that one side of it is contiguous with the sea and causes the sea to permeate through its veins, whence springs and rivers take their rise. The waters of this sea, in truth, are congregated into one place and are consequently deeper than if they were diffused, unless, perchance, the fact that they may be drawn off through the veins of the earth makes them less deep.” We have seen that Abelard and William of Conches compared the universe to an egg in which the four parts correspond to the four elements, 187fire, air, water, and earth.^[844] This was the theoretical arrangement of the elements according to the logical application of Aristotle’s physical laws. As a matter of fact, the aqueous sphere does not completely envelop the earth, as it should if this theoretical arrangement were carried out in nature. How, then, could it be explained that a portion of the earth’s surface is not covered by water? Robert Grosseteste, without attempting a physical explanation, answered this question from the teleological point of view, echoing the words of Genesis. “Truly it is a fact,” he wrote, “that, in order that the animals of this earth might have a habitation and refuge, the water receded into the concave parts of the earth and the surface of the land appeared dry and distinct. And so the land with the waters contained upon it is like a sphere of earth.”^[845] Later writers were not willing to accept such a simple declaration and looked for physical and mechanical explanations. For instance, Brunetto Latino assigned to the spheres of earth and of water each a different center, placed in such positions in relation to one another that the aqueous sphere covers the sphere of earth to a great depth on one side (the southern hemisphere) but on the opposite side leaves dry the portion inhabited by man.^[846] Certainly the passage we have quoted above shows that Abelard may well have had something of this sort in mind.

Relative Areas of Land and Sea

We saw in Chapter I that two theories prevailed in ancient times as to the distribution of land and water: the oceanic theory, that the oikoumene is surrounded by water; and the continental theory, that the oceans of the earth occupy relatively small and enclosed basins. Though the writers of our period held to the oceanic hypothesis, they had various and conflicting notions in regard to the size of the ocean or oceans which surround the known world. The great popularity of Martianus Capella and Macrobius, who both held the doctrine that there are three areas of land corresponding to our oikoumene in the three quarters of the earth’s surface, must have rendered impossible any widespread 188acceptance of a theory like the one hinted at by Abelard, that all of the earth’s surface except the oikoumene is covered by water; and the definition of the ocean as a zone or hem surrounding the inhabited world, not infrequently given in our period, certainly does not imply the existence of water areas of immense size in comparison with the land areas.^[847] Furthermore, the Second Book of Esdras, which, though apocryphal, enjoyed high authority in the Middle Ages,^[848] gave the reader an opposite impression. Here it was stated: “Upon the third day thou didst command that the waters should be gathered in the seventh part of the earth: six parts hast thou dried up, and kept them, to the intent that of these some being planted of God and tilled might serve thee.” “Upon the fifth day thou saidst unto the seventh part, where the waters gathered, that it should bring forth living creatures, fowls and fishes: and so it came to pass.” Roger Bacon uses this text from Esdras to reinforce his argument that, relatively speaking, the water surface of the world is very restricted in comparison with the land surface.^[849]

Explanation of Uniform Level of Sea Surface

Into the sea there pours at all times a vast volume of water from the rivers. Neckam moralized mournfully on this^[850] and compared the flow of fresh water into the salt depths with the way in which greater powers absorb lesser and the way in which the voluptuousness of this world—a sham sweetness—is turned to bitterness and salt; but he did not attempt to explain the puzzling physical problem of why the surface of the sea fails to rise and overflow the lands.^[851] Most writers who dealt with the latter problem appealed to the theory of the congregatio aquae: since all the waters of the earth form one unit, they must inevitably make their way back from the sea through various routes to the sources of streams.^[852] Other explanations, however, were sometimes brought forward. Adelard of Bath believed that the stars and sun absorb a certain amount of water.^[853] The author of the De imagine mundi was convinced that the fresh water entering the sea is partially consumed by the salt of the deeps and partially evaporated by the winds and taken up into the sun.^[854]

The two characteristics of the oceans that distinguish them from bodies of fresh water and have always aroused men’s curiosity are their saltness and their tides. The De imagine mundi gives a popular etymology of the word mare from amarum, meaning bitter or salty.^[855] Though there is no attempt in this book to show reasons for the salinity of the sea, the author followed Isidore and Bede in the opinion that the water at great depths is more bitter and salt than near the surface and that evaporation draws off the fresh water only and leaves the bitter and dense elements behind; similarly, that part of the sea water makes its way back to the sources of the springs, deposits its salt in the land, and bursts forth fresh and purified from its passage through the earth. In the Image du monde, on the other hand, there is a naïve explanation of why the sea is salt.^[856] Great saline mountains in the deeps are said to be constantly dissolving away and thereby imparting a peculiar character to the water. Adelard of Bath, Gervase of Tilbury, and William of Conches treated the subject a shade more rationally, perhaps, in attributing the saltness to the influence of heat. Adelard says,^[857] “I consider the cause of the saltness of the sea to be the heat of the sun and planets. For, since the true ocean passes through the heart of the torrid zone and since the course of the planets runs through the same zone, though obliquely, the ocean must of necessity be heated by such a great heat of the heavenly bodies that it is thereby rendered salt.” This explanation, he adds, is even subject to proof: for along coasts nearest the ocean, sea water “when dried in the sun on the rocks” may readily be converted into salt without any artificial aid; in more distant seas the water must be boiled and reboiled before this effect is produced. Furthermore, in summer all sea water is salter than in winter.

William of Conches^[858] and Alexander Neckam^[859] also followed Aristotle in believing that water in its purest form has an insipid taste but that it is thickened and rendered salt by the sun’s heat in the torrid ocean, whence it is distributed to the other seas by currents. Gervase of Tilbury tends to exaggerate this theory: 190we read in the Otia imperialia^[860] of a lake in the County of Aix, near Arles, the waters of which are congealed into ice by the cold of winter and into salt by the heat of August. This led Gervase to conclude that it would be impossible to sail around the earth, because the all-encircling ocean would be frozen stiff in the north and thickened into solid salt in the south.

Tides

If we discard fanciful ideas like that of Richard, prior of St. Victor in Paris (died 1173), to the effect that the tides are produced by the breathing of some great submarine monster or spirit,^[861] we find two distinct groups of tidal theories prevalent in the twelfth century: as Duhem defines them, the physical and the astrological. The astrological theories, which explained the tides by the influence of the moon, had been expounded before the period we are studying by Posidonius, Pliny, Bede, and the Moslem Abū Maʿshar. The physical theories had been set forth by Macrobius, who had believed that the tides were due to the impact of ocean currents, and Paul the Deacon, who had attributed them to the action of great whirlpools. Although twelfth-century students added little to these earlier opinions, they made some remarkable combinations of them, and their observations were distinguished by a few close records of actual tidal phenomena.^[862]

Lunar Causation

Bernard Sylvester explained the tides by lunar causation alone^[863] and attributed to the moon the power of attracting and repelling not only the waters but also terrestrial substances,^[864] inasmuch as the moon is the nearest planet to the earth, the largest, and consequently the most powerful.^[865]

In the following century we find that Robert Grosseteste saw in the effects of lunar rays upon the bottom of the sea sufficient cause for the ebb and flood. If in their broad outlines the ideas of the bishop of Lincoln are plain enough, the individual steps of his argument are neither clear nor coherent. They are of sufficient interest, nevertheless, to justify an attempt at interpreting 191them.^[866] We have already alluded to Robert’s theory of rays emanating from the celestial bodies in the shape of cones or “pyramids” and to his principle that the power of these rays is inverse to the obliquity of the angle at which they meet the earth’s surface and to the length of the pyramids.^[867] When the moon is rising, Grosseteste explains in the De natura locorum,^[868] the rays are very oblique and the pyramids long: hence the power of the rays is much too weak to disperse vapors that have accumulated on the sea floor or to draw these vapors up into the air. The result is that the vapors tend to displace the waters in the depths, to rise in bubbles to the surface, and thus to produce flood tides. As the moon approaches the meridian the rays become less oblique, the pyramids shorter, and the lunar power consequently greater. The moon now disperses and consumes the vapors and draws them up into the air from the depths of the sea. By the time our satellite reaches the meridian, the vapors are entirely consumed, “and, since the cause ceases, the effect also ceases; and the waters of the sea naturally flow back into their proper place in order not to create a vacuum.” Hence the ebb begins.

Grosseteste does not make clear what generates the vapors, though he probably meant us to assume that they were produced by the heat due to the reflection of the moon’s rays upon the sea floor. In another treatise, the De impressionibus elementorum,^[869] he explains how reflected rays, though not necessarily the rays of the moon, in passing through a transparent body of water may create heat at the bottom.

The problem of the flood tide when the moon is in the opposite hemisphere of the heavens still remained. Grosseteste’s obscure explanation of this runs about as follows: “Many try to give a reason for this difficult circumstance on the grounds that opposite quarters of the universe are of the same composition (commixtionis) and consequently produce the same effects. But this explanation falls short, since it is false to assert that there are any actual replicas of the stars of one quarter of the heavens in another quarter, inasmuch as the earth interposes its bulk between a planet in one quarter and the quarter opposite. Moreover, 192even were this explanation true, an explanation of the original cause would be required. That is to say, it would be necessary to ask why the opposite quarters are of the same composition and consequently exert the same effect. The fact is that the reflection of rays solves this problem, since the rays of the moon are multiplied on the stellar heaven. Because the stellar heaven is an opaque body, we are consequently not able to see it, though it nevertheless is very luminous according to Alpetragius and Messalahe [sic]. Other reflected rays fall on the opposite quarter at right angles.”^[870]

Terrestrial Causation

Most writers found that the astrological, or lunar, theory alone was insufficient to explain all the peculiarities of the tides and made appeal, as well, to physical theories—in particular to that of Macrobius. This is given in varying terms by Adelard of Bath, Lambert of St. Omer, William of Conches, and Giraldus Cambrensis. Macrobius, as we have already observed, had conceived of four ocean currents issuing out of the great equatorial ocean and flowing north and south in the girdling ocean which includes the poles.^[871] These currents run together somewhere in the polar regions; the waters rebound on themselves (ex repercussione ingurgitur retro mare) and in this way cause the ebb and flow. Lambert of St. Omer in his Liber floridus seems to have accepted the Macrobian theory much as it stands,^[872] but Adelard harbored doubts as to the sufficiency of the impact of the waters against each other to produce a tidal rebound and thought that some mountain or other mass of land must interpose to produce such an effect.^[873]

William of Conches cites two theories of tidal controls:^[874] the first is that of Macrobius; the second, confusingly stated, suggests Adelard’s hypothesis of an interposing mass of land. William says, in effect, that the tides are due in part to the existence of mountains submerged beneath the sea, against which the waters are attracted forward and then repelled, producing an oscillating motion. As to this, we may well be led to inquire how Macrobius, Adelard, and William explained this oscillating motion, for certainly two steadily flowing currents meeting each other or 193running against submerged reefs would not create any such motion. Unfortunately in this we are left unsatisfied by our medieval writers, who characteristically here, as often elsewhere, were content, when stating that one phenomenon causes another, to leave entirely to the imagination the explanation of the manner in which such causation is actually effected.

William did not rule out all lunar control over the ebb and flood but explained the spring and neap tides by variations in the moon’s power of heating and drying the atmosphere. This power, he thought, is at a minimum both when the moon is full and when it is new. Consequently we have high spring tides at these times, and vice versa. William’s theory is the reverse of Abū Maʿshar’s:^[875] that the tides are caused by the active attraction by the moon of the humid elements on the earth’s surface. William fails to show us why the tides should be in flood when the moon is rising toward the meridian and why spring tides should occur when there is a full moon. Abū Maʿshar, on the other hand, fails to explain why there is a flood tide when the moon is on the other side of the earth, in the opposite celestial hemisphere.

Alexander Neckam gives what is, to say the least, an unsatisfactory treatment of the tides.^[876] After quoting the scientific opinions of others, he remarks that to explain the ebb and flow of the waters is a problem that cannot be solved. Then, in his customary vein, he adds the moral observation that the tides are like the persecutions of the Christians and that they should not fill one with too much despair, for after they have risen they always subside again in the due course of time.^[877]

William the Breton wondered at the tides but, like Neckam, refrained from trying to explain their cause and said that God alone understands this and no man can comprehend it either now or ever.^[878] He was amazed that such a wide, deep, and powerful stream as the Seine at Rouen could be forced back upon itself by the waters of the sea and made to flow in the opposite direction through a space of land across which its normal current could scarcely pass in three days. Was this due to the fact that fresh water is less powerful than salt? Or does the fresh water find the salt water odious and recoil before it? Or does the stream do 194reverence, as it were, to its mother, the sea, falling back before her and then when the tide turns following behind her respectfully? None of these explanations was William ready to accept as true. “For us who live our human lot here below, it is sufficient to know the fact; it is not allowed to us to know the cause.”^[879]

Giraldus Cambrensis’ Tidal Studies

The most elaborate tidal studies of our period are in the pages of Giraldus Cambrensis’ Topographia Hiberniae, where we find a combination of the astrological theory of Abū Maʿshar, the whirlpool theory of Paul the Deacon, and the ocean-current theory of Macrobius. Giraldus said that when the moon passes the meridian the waters begin to recede from the coasts of Britain and to retire into hidden submarine reservoirs.^[880] The moon, being the heavenly body that controls all things humid on the earth, when full causes the tides to rise to unusual heights. A little further on in his discussion, Giraldus explains that at the four opposite parts of the ocean there is a force that violently attracts the sea water, producing a sort of periodic swelling and sinking; this is connected in some manner with a belief in Giraldus’ mind that greater quantities of fresh water enter the sea at the extremities of the earth and in the vicinity of the poles than elsewhere, though on what he based this supposition and how it produced the results which he ascribes to it, he does not explain. Giraldus’ theory also owes much to Macrobius’ hypothesis of the effects of the collision of ocean currents on the tides, as well as to Paul the Deacon’s whirlpool theory, for he explains elsewhere^[881] that philosophers mention the existence of four whirlpools at the opposite ends of the earth and that some people attribute to these the causation of tides and storms of wind. Each of the whirlpools resembles a great vortex in the northern seas towards which the waters of the sea rush together, to be absorbed in secret caverns as if in an abyss; ships approaching too near are sucked in and destroyed.

The most interesting feature of Giraldus’ tidal studies, however, are not these general speculations regarding causes but some very neat observations made on the British and Irish coasts. In 195the first place, he remarks on the choppy water of the Irish Sea, which presumably he connects with tide rips.^[882] He then goes on to discuss the difference in the hour of high water at various Irish ports, at Milford Haven in Wales, and at Bristol in England. When the tide is at the half-ebb in Dublin, at Milford Haven it is at the half-flood, and near Bristol just beginning the rise. Let us see what the facts of the case are at the present day.^[883] On February 1, 1919, half-ebb occurred at Dublin at about 2:30 P. M., half-flood at Milford Haven only about an hour and a half later, and low water had occurred at Bristol half an hour earlier. In other words Giraldus’ observations on the relative times of the tides at these three points were unusually accurate. Furthermore, he explains that at Wicklow, on the Irish coast opposite Wales, the water falls at the same time that it rises throughout the sea in general. When Giraldus here speaks of the “sea in general” he perhaps had in mind tidal observations made at other points on the coast not far to the south. Modern tide tables show that near Arklow, only about fourteen miles away, it is low water some two hours and a half earlier than at Wicklow. The water, consequently, is rising at Arklow for two hours and a half while it is still falling at Wicklow. That Giraldus was familiar with Arklow is shown by the fact that he mentions a river entering the sea there and describes a curious rock in the harbor.^[884]

Finally, Giraldus states^[885] that when the moon has passed the meridian the waters first recede from the coasts of Britain but that on the Irish coasts in the vicinity of Dublin full flood corresponds to this recession of the waters. In the vicinity of Wexford, however, flood waters do not correspond with the flood at Dublin but rather with the flood waters on the British coast at Milford Haven. Giraldus was mistaken, if we are right in interpreting his words to mean that he thought that the tidal undulation which produces high water at Dublin is a different wave from that of Wexford or Milford Haven. No tidal undulation enters the Irish Sea from the north, and consequently the ebb and flood at all of these places is caused by the same wave. On the other hand, this wave reaches Dublin nearly five 196hours later than it reaches Wexford and Milford on the opposite shore, and the accuracy of Giraldus’ data on the time of these tides is further confirmed by modern tide tables, which show that flood water at the Welsh port may occur only twenty-four minutes earlier than at Rosslare Point, the entrance to Wexford Harbor.

It would be interesting if we could know how Giraldus gathered these data. Probably they were pieced together from incidental observations of sailors or fishermen, for certainly no systematic investigation of tidal phenomena could well have been undertaken at Giraldus’ time.^[886] It is typical of an immense amount of close and accurate knowledge that has always existed along with ignorance and superstition among the more humble workers of this world, knowledge that until recent years has but rarely found literary expression.

Other Marine Phenomena Noted by Giraldus

Giraldus certainly was not always so fortunate in his discussion of marine phenomena. He taxes our credulity a little when he tells of a rock in Arklow harbor on one side of which the water rises while it is falling on the other,^[887] though this may perhaps have resulted from some local play of currents and eddies. It is less easy to find an explanation of a story which he relates of a recession of the sea at “Crebonensus” (Proconnesus?) near Constantinople.^[888] Here, during eight days at the time of the festival of St. Clement, the waters fell back in order to allow pilgrims to go to the saint’s shrine. This kind of miracle, to be sure, had the support of Biblical authority in the story of the parting of the waters of the Red Sea to permit the passing of the children of Israel; and we find a similar tale in the Otia imperialia,^[889] where Gervase asserts that the Sea of Pamphylia was divided for Alexander the Great, because God wished to destroy the Persian kingdom by means of the Macedonian. The lake (or river) which in the legend surrounded the church of St. Thomas in India was also said to go dry at regular intervals to permit pilgrims to approach.^[890]

In his description of South Wales, Giraldus Cambrensis gives 197an account of marine encroachments on the land and perhaps of coastal subsidence. A great storm on this sandy coast laid bare a forest hitherto covered by the waters. Trunks of trees appeared with marks of the ax upon them, fresh as if cut only the day before. Giraldus was convinced that the marks dated from inconceivable antiquity, perhaps even from the time of the Flood.^[891] The wood was overwhelmed, he said, by the constant and ever increasingly violent advance of the sea; and certainly it is well known in modern days that the waves long have been eating into the coast of Pembrokeshire and that the uncovering by storms of buried forests and stumps is a commonplace occurrence there. Perhaps we are justified in interpreting Giraldus’ remarks by assuming that the forest had not, as he states, previously been covered by water but more probably by marine sands or muds, which subsequently were removed from the stumps by storm waves.

St. Brandan and the Spirit of the Sea

Less scientific—or perhaps we had better say less prosaic—than the writings we have just been discussing but fully as replete with understanding of the ocean and its various moods, is the legend of the wanderings of St. Brandan. The style and spirit of this entire story shows that it must have been composed by men filled with a sense of the immensity and mystery of the Atlantic.^[892] Probably the tale had its roots in the reports of actual voyagings of Irishmen blown far out to sea. Although there is much of the marvelous and supernatural borrowed from older tradition, the tone of the legend as a whole rings true to nature. Certainly it was not written by a landsman. At one time St. Brandan and his companions sailed north for three days, and the sea became “as it were coagulated through an excess of calmness.”^[893] It has been suggested that this refers to the semi-solid “Liver Sea” of Germanic legend, itself perhaps an echo of the reports of Pytheas and other classical writers about clotted sea waters north of Thule and in the Western Ocean.^[894] On another occasion the travelers came in sight of a high column of clearest crystal apparently not far away, though it took three days to reach it.^[895] So great was its 198height that they could scarce discern the summit, and as they drew near they saw that it was covered by a silvery canopy of marvelously fine texture. They passed through a hole in the canopy and entered a sea whose waters were so clear that the base of the column could be seen resting on the earth at the bottom of the sea. For an entire day they sailed along one side of the column. If we discard from all this what is obviously fabulous or borrowed from the vision of Ezekiel^[896] or from the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation,^[897] may we not be justified in supposing that the sight of a great iceberg flashing in the sun gave rise to the story of the crystalline column and that the canopy represented curtains of fog hanging about its flanks?

St. Brandan and his crew also had other glimpses of the bottom of the sea^[898] through waters of such remarkable transparency that they thought they could almost touch the beasts of various kinds lying there. When mass was said on board, these beasts rose and circled about the ship but did not molest the saint and his party. After seven days’ voyage with sails set they had scarcely crossed this stretch of translucent water.

Bottom of the Sea

We find other accounts of the bottom of the sea and even of visits made to it, in the legendary writings of our period. Gervase of Tilbury^[899] tells of an individual named Nicholas Pappas, a dweller on the shores of the Strait of Messina, who was forced by King Roger II of Sicily to dive into the waters. Being well known to the submarine monsters, he escaped all danger from molestation by them and afterwards used to tell about a grove beneath the “Strait of Pharo,” how the tides wash first one way and then the other through the branches of the trees, and how he had seen submarine mountains, valleys, fields and woods, and trees with acorns on them. Gervase adds that our faith in the truth of this story may be increased by noting the fact that acorns are often washed ashore along the neighboring coasts. Nicholas also used to occupy himself by warning ships of the approach of storms and showing sailors how to calm the waters with oil. At a later period the legend became current^[900] of a 199man named “Piscis” or “The Fish” (possibly this should be substituted for the “Pappas” of Gervase) who was accustomed to swim under the Strait of Messina, having been sent there in the first place to rescue a chalice cast into the sea by King Roger.

Alexander the Great, according to one version of the Romance of his adventures, also made a visit to the sea floor.^[901] After he had crossed a desert infested with ferocious beasts, he called his companions together and complained that, in view of the fact that he had conquered the greater part of the world, he knew enough about the inhabitants of the land and now wanted to learn something of the inhabitants of the sea. He then proceeded to descend in a glass cask to the bottom of the deeps; there, among other things, he noted that the large fish eat the small ones, an observation whose novelty hardly seems to have justified the effort expended to make it.

Let us turn now to the waters of the lands—ground water, sources (wells, springs, fountains), rivers, and finally lakes.

Ground Water

In our period the existence of water in various forms underneath the surface of the land was well understood. Bernard Sylvester says:^[902] “A watery humor is diffused all through the lap of the land and makes streams and rivers, swamps and lakes.” William of Conches attributed^[903] the origin of the water in springs and wells to (1) underground streams, or, as he called them, “cataracts,” which pass through wells en route from one part of the earth to another, and (2) the sweat of the earth (sudor terrae), or minute particles of water percolating through small holes in the earth much as human sweat percolates through the pores of the body. William maintained that the existence of underground watercourses as a source of well water was proved by the fact that wells near rivers are constantly full and that whatever happens to the water of a well in a given district is likely to happen to the water of all the other wells in the vicinity, showing that there must be some intercommunication between 200them. That springs and wells were constantly replenished in dry times was proof to William—as to modern geographers—of the existence of the sweat of the earth, or what we now call “ground water,” which permeates the interstices in rocks, gravel, and sand alike. It is possible, however, that William believed that the sudor terrae was actually generated by the earth. This was undoubtedly the opinion of Adelard of Bath, who discusses the subject in terms very similar to those of William.^[904]

The Sea As the Source of the Waters of the Land

Most of this subterranean water, as we have already seen, was supposed during the Middle Ages to come from the sea, whence it made its way inland either through the atmosphere in the form of rain or directly through the land. We need cite but two texts to show how firmly this idea was rooted in the medieval mind. One is from a sermon of Bernard of Clairvaux, the other from a questionnaire prepared by the Emperor Frederick II. It would perhaps be hard to find two men who stood at more diametrically opposite intellectual poles, and yet both, in this case, shared the same conviction.

Bernard, characteristically, treated the matter symbolically. “The sea,” he said, “is the source of fountains and rivers; the Lord Jesus Christ is the source of every kind of virtue and knowledge.... What? Are not pure purposes, just judgments, holy aspirations, one and all streams from that same source? If all waters seek incessantly to return to the sea, making their way thither sometimes by hidden and subterranean channels, so that they may go forth from it again in continual and untiring circuit, becoming visible once more to man and available for his service, why are not those spiritual streams rendered back constantly and without reserve to their legitimate source, that they may not cease to water the fields of our hearts? Let the rivers of divers graces return from whence they came, that they may flow forth anew. Let the heavenly shower rise again to its heavenly source that it may be poured anew and still more plentifully upon the earth” (Eales’s translation).^[905]

Frederick II propounded to Michael Scot a list of questions on 201matters of cosmology and physical geography. Regarding most of these matters the Emperor was in doubt and perplexity, but concerning the waters of land and sea he was sure. “For we greatly wonder at these things,” he said, “knowing already that all waters come from the sea and passing through divers lands and cavities return to the sea, which is the bed and receptacle of all running waters” (Haskins’ translation).^[906]

A most elaborate discussion of the qualities of the waters of the lands is found in the Causae et curae of Hildegard of Bingen.^[907] Hildegard likewise assumed that the water of wells, springs, and rivers is derived from the ocean which surrounds the earth.^[908] She also believed that the nature of the water varies widely in different parts of the ocean and consequently that the quality of the water of the land depends on the part of the ocean from which it comes. Furthermore, she maintained that some of the waters of the sea do not lose their salinity in passing through the land but that other waters are rendered fresh before they appear upon the earth’s surface. Upon the basis of these assumptions Hildegard proceeded to analyze the qualities, sanitary, medicinal, and gastronomic, of waters both fresh and salt according to their derivation from the four cardinal points and from the northeast and northwest. Her analysis was meant as a practical guide for those who wished to use water for drinking and bathing with a minimum risk of disease, though she fails to explain how one is to determine the ultimate source of a specific spring, well, or river. Without undertaking a detailed examination of Hildegard’s argument, we may note that, unlike Giraldus Cambrensis, who regarded the East as the fountain of poisons, she believed that the waters of the Orient were the purest and most healthful of all. On the other hand, she held that the putrid and corrupt elements of the earth were concentrated in the Western Sea and that waters coming from that quarter were very dangerous unless boiled.^[909] The Southern Sea harbored an immense quantity of venomous worms and small animals, and consequently waters from it were not good for cooking or drinking. As we shall see in the next chapter,^[910] Giraldus Cambrensis’ discussion of the different qualities of the East and West was probably based in 202some measure on observation. The same can hardly be said of Hildegard’s theories. We cannot but feel that they were the offspring of an unusually ingenious imagination, though the prophetic abbess undoubtedly attributed them to divine inspiration.

Hildegard went on to assert that swamp waters are dangerous from whatever part of the earth they come, since they contain vile and noxious damp elements of the ground and the poisonous spume of worms. Such waters should not be used unboiled except for washing. Well and spring waters which flow from swamps are equally bad, though as a general rule all waters arising from an unsanitary source become purer the farther they flow. Water from deep wells is usually better and smoother (suavior) for cooking, drinking, and other uses of man than the water of flowing springs; the latter, in turn, is better than river water, which should be avoided because of the impurities it receives from the air. The water of small, clear, pure rills is excellent for both men and cattle.

Effect of Land on Waters Which Spring From It

The land itself might produce varying effects on the water within it, and thus on the wells and fountains which spring from it. In summer, William of Conches tells us,^[911] the pores of the earth are open, and the warm vapor (fumus) contained therein can escape. Consequently the heat of the earth is loosed, and the springs and wells are cooler than in winter, when the cold constricts the earth’s pores and keeps the heat in. It is very easy to understand what gave rise to such a theory when we consider the fact that water always preserves a more uniform temperature than the surrounding air. Hot and putrid springs, the De imagine mundi tells us,^[912] are caused by the ground water coming into contact with subterranean caves full of sulphur that is sometimes ignited by the winds. In some places serpents, by poisoning the earth and the ground water which passes through it, indirectly cause the water sources of a region to become noxious.^[913] Michael Scot, in a somewhat repetitious and not wholly clear passage, explained in effect that the hot and boiling springs 203of Italy and Sicily are produced by waters arising out of subterranean cavities where the native heat of the interior of the earth in combination with the winds produces a violent combustion of sulphur and “white-hot rocks” (petre calidissime).^[914]

Miraculous Wells and Springs; Geysers

Wells and springs, like lakes, seem to have appealed to the imagination of men at all times, and the description of their peculiarities occupied disproportionate space in medieval books of marvels. Giraldus Cambrensis mentions wells with petrifying properties in Ulster, Norway, Britain, and Cappadocia;^[915] and Saxo Grammaticus expresses great wonder at a spring in Iceland the exhalation or foam of which is capable of turning the softest substances almost instantaneously into the hardest stone.^[916] Gervase of Tilbury describes a salt well in the diocese of Worcester.^[917] Though these are reasonable enough, it is a little more difficult to explain Giraldus’ belief in wells which ebb and flow like the tides,^[918] especially when he insists that some of them are situated far from the sea.

Giraldus describes an absolutely miraculous spring in the province of Munster in Ireland.^[919] When touched or even looked at by a man, this spring will proceed to inundate the entire province with rain. The rain does not stop until a priest, virgin from birth and especially deputed for the purpose, celebrates mass in a chapel not far away and, having blessed the waters, conciliates the spring by sprinkling into it the milk of a one-colored cow. Giraldus remarked parenthetically that this was a barbaric ceremony and quite lacking in reason. Gervase of Tilbury tells of a lake in Great Britain which would produce a storm when certain words were chanted over it and of a fountain in the Kingdom of Arles which would cause rain if a stick or stone were thrown into it.^[920] These tales, indeed, are but examples of a widespread belief among primitive and ignorant folk that man can attain the secret of the magical control of the elements. Sir James G. Frazer cites them with similar examples from other peoples and ages as illustrations of the doctrine that a “way of constraining the rain-god is to disturb him in his haunts. This seems to be 204the reason why rain is supposed to follow the troubling of a sacred spring.”^[921]

In treating the water element in his De naturis rerum, Alexander Neckam rushes over the problems of the four rivers of Paradise and of why the sea is salt to come to a discussion of springs,^[922] about which he relates many marvels, appending to each a little moral lesson. For example, he tells of two founts in Italy, one of which turns the feathers of white birds black, and the other the feathers of black birds white. He suggests the analogy of the former to contemporary worldly knowledge that darkens minds glowing in the brightness of innocence; and of the latter to true wisdom that renders serene minds obscured by the shades of vice.^[923] Then he goes on to discourse about springs that rise when some one throws a red cloth into them; a spring that boils up with much noise, as if in annoyance, when men talk near it; a spring that gives flame to an unburnt torch and puts out a lighted one; and a spring whose water, when thrown upon a certain rock in its neighborhood, causes a storm of wind, rain, and hail to arise. These are but a few of many remarkable sources that Neckam describes and places in various parts of the world, drawing on Solinus, Isidore, and the mass of medieval pseudo-science that flourished in all countries.

More convincing is Saxo Grammaticus’ circumstantial account of certain water holes in Iceland. In these the water sometimes wells up in abundance and is thrown high into the air in a shower of drops. At other times the flow is quiescent, and the water seems to be sucked into the holes deep in the earth where it scarce may be seen. This description is obviously based on reports Saxo had received from eyewitnesses of the geysers of Iceland.^[924]

The Fountain of Youth

The most remarkable and most sought-for of sources has always been the Fountain of Youth. In the first letter of Prester John we find the description^[925] of a grove at the foot of Mount Olympus, not far from Paradise, in Central Asia. In this grove there is a spring that wafts forth odors of all kinds, varying from 205hour to hour, by day and by night. Its waters give eternal youth to any one who bathes therein, restoring him to the bodily strength and vigor that he possessed at the age of thirty-two. Closely parallel to this account, though probably not derived from it, is a description in the Romance of Alexander^[926] of a fountain that receives its waters from the Euphrates, one of the four rivers of Paradise, and which four times daily has the power of rejuvenation. Two old men who jumped in emerged looking exactly as if they were thirty years old. Akin to the Fountain of Youth, but less powerful in its action, is a spring described by Gervase^[927] in Staffordshire, England, to which he attributed the ability of restoring energy to men when weary. But this is true of any fresh mountain pool.

Rivers

As to the source of rivers, we need add nothing to what has already been said about the “congregation of waters” (congregatio aquae) and about springs and fountains. It was commonly thought in medieval and classical times that two or more rivers may rise from one source and flow off in diverse directions. The most striking example of this was furnished by the Scriptural four rivers of Paradise, which, though rising from one stream, were believed to find their way to at least three different seas. In commenting on the rivers of Paradise, Gervase of Tilbury expressly asserts^[928] that not only is it possible for more than one stream to rise from the same headwaters but that the same rivers may again mingle and again separate their waters. Giraldus Cambrensis describes^[929] how the Shannon of Ireland rises in a lake between Connaught and Munster and thence divides into two branches flowing in opposite ways, one southward to the “Sea of Brandan,” the other northward into the Northern Ocean. It is true that in regions of imperfect drainage development, like Ireland, northern North America, and parts of the Amazon Valley, two small streams occasionally do spring from a single source. On the other hand, it is entirely contrary to the laws of hydrography that two or more full-grown rivers should either leave a lake and depart across country in different directions or, 206except in the case of deltas, owe their origin to the separation of the waters of a single large stream. Classical and medieval geographers, however, were not acquainted with this law, and the words of the Bible justified the writers of geographical books, even down to as late a date as the eighteenth century, in making broad rivers divide into separate branches and wander at random over the country.

Giraldus Cambrensis noted several other peculiarities of rivers.^[930] For example, he remarked that the stream at Wicklow which flows across the harbor (we may presume in a channel through mud flats) is brackish at ebb tide; a similar river at Arklow is fresh.^[931] Tide water, he said, does not mingle with the River Conway in North Wales.^[932] Elsewhere he observed that the term aber in Welsh is applied to all those places where one stream flows into another.^[933] The River Dee is not affected by rains, but the winds make it rise.^[934] It changes its bed every year, and, as its course forms the boundary between England and Wales, these changes are interpreted as omens foretelling whether the English or the Welsh are going to be the more successful in their combats with each other during the succeeding year.^[935]

The Nile Flood

In his consideration of the problem of the flood of the Nile, Abelard gives a curious example of the symbolic interpretation of scriptural and geographic matters which was also characteristic of the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux.^[936] Isidore had followed earlier classical authorities in describing the flood as due to the building up, by the etesian winds, of sand bars at the mouth of the river during the winter.^[937] Abelard, from Bede’s rendering of Isidore’s text,^[938] adopted the same theory in his discussion of the Nile in the Expositio in hexaemeron.^[939] He also discussed the Nile flood in a sermon on the text, “And the Lord, the God of hosts, is He who toucheth the earth, and it shall melt: and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up as a river and shall run down as the river of Egypt” (Amos ix, 5). In the sermon^[940] he compared the rising of the Lord at the resurrection to the Nile: as the river fructifies the land, so the Lord strengthened 207the despairing hearts of his disciples. Abelard then quoted the passage from Bede just mentioned, and proceeded to interpret it as follows: The Nile coming down from Paradise is like unto the wisdom of God descending from above to give us to drink as from a fountain. Egypt is like unto the carnal darkness of this world. Its river enters the sea through seven mouths, which are obstructed when the wind blows and causes the backing up of the waters that can find no outlet. Thus, after the resurrection of the Lord but before the sevenfold grace of his spirit could find its way out into the broad sea of the nations, it was impeded as were the waters of the Nile. In other words, the apostles, through fear of the Jews, were held in Judea blinded, as it were, and for some time were not permitted to go forth as if from Egypt and through their preaching to bring about a rebirth of mankind. What does the wind represent, Abelard asks, if not the temptation of the devil? And what the sand, if not those men who at the turning of the ages wavered this way and that, held fast by earthly desires and temptations? ^[941]

It is hardly necessary to point out the contrast between this sort of geographical speculation and that of William of Conches. Better perhaps than any other text with which the writer is familiar, these ideas of Abelard illustrate that absorption, so often characteristic of medieval thought, of scientific and geographical interests into those of theology.

Lakes

Abundance of lakes is characteristic of glaciated countries like New England, Switzerland, Scotland, Sweden, Wales, and Ireland. Giraldus Cambrensis was impressed by the number of lakes in Ireland, where, he says,^[942] they are more numerous than in any other part of the world. Giraldus and Gervase of Tilbury describe many lacustrine marvels.

In tracing the history of Ireland, Giraldus says ^[943] that about three hundred years after the Deluge four ponds suddenly broke forth from the bowels of the earth and that this was repeated at the time of the third colonization of Ireland under Neimhith.^[944] Two ponds in Wales ^[945] were said to have burst their bounds and 208overflowed the neighborhood on the night of the death of Henry I. Before a great war, during which a province of central Wales was ravaged, a certain lake turned green, and old men described a similar portent just before the devastation of Wales by “Hoel, son of Moreduc” (Howel, son of Meredith).^[946] The Lake of Brecknock in Wales appears sometimes a greenish color and sometimes ruddy as if penetrated by veins of blood.^[947] Perhaps Giraldus was reminded of this by the mud-streaked appearance of mountain tarns after a rain, but it is less easy to explain the buildings, pastures, gardens, and orchards which he declares were occasionally visible beneath the surface. On the other hand, all who are familiar with inland waters in cold latitudes know the booming sounds they emit when frozen, which Giraldus compares to the moaning of a large herd of animals. These noises, he said, were caused by the sudden outrush of air imprisoned beneath the ice. At the top of Mount Snowdon, according to Giraldus, there are two lakes, one containing a floating island blown by the winds.^[948] The most interesting lake with which Giraldus deals, however, is Lough Neagh in Ireland. This, he said,^[949] lies in Ulster and is of remarkable size, thirty miles by fifteen. Though the relative proportions are right, the actual size is exaggerated, the dimensions being fifteen English miles long by from five to eight broad. The origin of the lake he attributed to an inundation that came as a punishment for the unnatural crimes of the natives of the region. This led him to a comparison of the story of Lough Neagh with the Biblical history of the destruction of the Pentapolis and the origins of the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea has always exerted a potent fascination over the minds of men. The uncanny natural features of its basin, and the terrible story associated with them, have been objects of curiosity from the very earliest times. Gervase of Tilbury goes into some detail on the subject.^[950] The five cities, he says, were submerged, on account of the sins of their inhabitants, in a salt and sterile lake called the Dead Sea, where neither bird nor fish can live. The sea is open to no ship; nay, it even rises over everything not impregnated with bitumen, probably because of the living men within it. If any one by any means 209immerses a living creature in it, the living being immediately leaps out.^[951] A burning torch will float on the lake, an extinct one will sink. There was certainly an infernal quality about the Dead Sea, and it was even supposed that beneath its waters there was an entrance into Hell.

Gervase tells of the discovery of another mouth of Hell near Pozzuoli in southern Italy.^[952] A bishop John of Pozzuoli was said to have discovered a pond whose waters were opaque but would become clear and translucent when oil was thrown upon them. Exploring about its shores one day, the bishop heard the sounds of lamentation coming from beneath the waters and, casting oil upon them, was horrified to behold, far down in the depths, the gateway to the infernal regions! Elsewhere^[953] Gervase tells of a lake on the summit of Mount Cavagum (Canigou) in Catalonia, inhabited by devils, who raise a storm when stones are thrown in to disturb them.

The inquiring curiosity of men as well as of children is not first stimulated by those things which seem most usual and commonplace. The latter are taken for granted. Science originates rather in the wonder aroused by the extraordinary or by the impressive. Only after a long process of development does it turn to the study of the homely and the obvious.

The truth of this is illustrated in the medieval geography of the lands. Geomorphology, or the science of land forms, was very much in its infancy during our period and for many centuries thereafter. Only rarely did the man of the Middle Ages seek for an explanation of the origin of the familiar features of the earth’s surface which he saw around him day by day. If he described a landscape in terms that often reveal love of its beauty or, at least, appreciation of its productive capacity, he was almost totally blind to the possibilities of profounder analysis of its nature. A plain was a plain, a valley a valley because God had made it so.

The present chapter will deal mainly with the character of these external, unscientific descriptions of land forms. The attempt will be made, however, to point out a few notable exceptions to the general rule, a few cases where men sought for a deeper meaning in the aspects of nature than the meaning written upon the surface.

Quantitative and Qualitative Subdivisions

There are two ways of subdividing and classifying areas of land, the quantitative and the qualitative.

Adelard of Bath gives us an example of a quantitative subdivision where he tells in his De eodem et diverso^[954] that the inventor of geometry split the known world into parts (or, perhaps, continents), 211the parts into provinces, the provinces into regions, the regions into localities, the localities into territories, the territories into fields, the fields into centuries, and the centuries into jugera (acres).

The author of the De imagine mundi, borrowing from Isidore,^[955] makes a qualitative subdivision.^[956] Land, he says, may be grouped under six different heads, terra being the name applied to the entire element of earth. The six kinds of terra are: (1) tellus, fertile; (2) humus, infertile, because of an excess of moisture; (3) arida, waterless, like Libya, dried up by the sun; (4) sicca, rather less dry than arida, but where, nevertheless, all precipitation quickly disappears, as in Judea; (5) solum, so called from its solidity, as mountainous land (a soliditate ut sunt montana); and, finally (6) ops, or wealthy land, like that of India, where gold and gems abound.^[957]