Chapter IV: Introduction: The Time of the Crusades

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.

SCOPE OF THE TERM “GEOGRAPHICAL LORE”

By “geographical lore” we mean what was known, believed, and felt about the origins, present condition, and distribution of 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, geocentric, 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.

ORIGINS OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL LORE OF THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES

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.

ORGANIZATION OF THE PRESENT WORK

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.

By 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