Chapter III: 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), deals 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. Dr. 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._