IV. THE SOURCES FOR THE PERIOD 1100–1250 A. D
INTRODUCTION
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. One 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.
THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS
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 dialectic, 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]
Peter Lombard and Peter Comestor
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 about 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]
Bernard Sylvester
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 period 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.
TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ARABIC; WORKS WRITTEN UNDER ARABIC INFLUENCE; ARISTOTELIANISM AND ITS OPPONENTS
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]
A 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 and 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 stock 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 Greek 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 introductorius 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 by 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 considerations. 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]
ENCYCLOPEDIC WORKS
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.
“DE IMAGINE MUNDI”
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.
Of 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
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 well 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 encyclopedic 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.
HISTORIES, CHRONICLES, SAGAS, EPIC POEMS
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 Freising. 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 show 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 source 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 litigation, 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 “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]
LEGENDS
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 later 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]
ST. BRANDAN
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.
PILGRIM NARRATIVES; MISCELLANEOUS RECORDS OF TRAVEL
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 of 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 through 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 sometime 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]
TOPOGRAPHICAL WORKS
We must now examine a few works on the geography and topography of local regions.
GODFREY OF VITERBO
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. Though 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.
Before 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.
MAPS
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 in 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]
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 on 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.
b. 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 probably 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, such 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.
V. THE PLACE OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE MEDIEVAL CLASSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE
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.
GEOGRAPHY INCLUDED UNDER GEOMETRY
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 spring 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 INCLUDED UNDER ASTROLOGY
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 those 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]
GEOGRAPHY AND THE ARISTOTELIAN DIVISION OF LEARNING
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.
VI. COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, AND COSMOGRAPHY
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.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE COSMOLOGY AND NATURAL SCIENCE OF THE PERIOD
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 of 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 judge, 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 a 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 of 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 CREATION
The usual medieval treatise on the Works of the Six Days as described in the Book of Genesis deals with many problems. Some of 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 day, 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]
A Rational View
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.
Coincidently 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 according 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 to 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, however, 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 expression 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 remained 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]
MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM
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 and 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.
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 the 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.
SHAPE, MOVEMENTS, AND SIZE OF THE EARTH
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 observations.[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 the 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 from 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.”
Theodoric 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 suggest 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.
ZONES, THE ANTIPODES, AND “CLIMATA”
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.”
UNINHABITABILITY OF POLAR CAPS AND EQUATORIAL ZONE
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 been 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 ocean.[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 other 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?
Gervase 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]
HABITABILITY OF THE EQUATORIAL REGION
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 directly 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 angle. 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 in 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]
VII. THE ATMOSPHERE
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.
METEOROLOGY
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 atoms 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 that 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 clouds 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 heat 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 will 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).
What 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 swift-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 was 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 tradition 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.
CLIMATOLOGY
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.
HOT AND COLD CLIMATES
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:
“Ca c’est entur la seint Johan Que la chalur tote rien seche En la terre, tele est sa teche.”[792]
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]
DISTRIBUTION OF CLIMATES
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 and 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] he 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 they 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, and 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]