Chapter II

THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D.

_INTRODUCTION_

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 sciences 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 current 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.

_SOURCES_

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 description 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]

CLASSICAL INFLUENCES

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 sive 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 by 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 of 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, were 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.

_THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE_

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 between 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. One 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.

_SHAPE AND SIZE OF THE EARTH_

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 Scriptural 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 is 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 AND THE ANTIPODES_

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 western 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 regions. 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]

_PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY_

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 hail 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, Ambrose, 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 their 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.

THE SEA

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 and 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]

_THE MEDIEVAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY BEFORE 1100 A. D._

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]

EARLY CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS NATURE

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 doubtful. 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 AND CARTOGRAPHY_

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] Three 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 he 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.)
]

_Sallust Maps_

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).

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.)
]

_REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY_

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 pilgrim, 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 kept 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 that “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 of 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 what 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] The 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.