VIII. THE WATERS
THE WATERS ABOVE THE FIRMAMENT
RATIONALISTIC BELIEFS
“And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament” (Gen. i, 7).
We saw in Chapter II that this text had induced many of the earlier Church Fathers to devise strange theories about the waters above the firmament. The idea of Jerome, Josephus, Ambrose, Isidore, and Bede that these waters were in crystalline, or frozen, form met with opposition from those who were influenced by classical science and especially by the writings of Aristotle. Abelard in his Expositio in hexaemeron[818] discussed in considerable detail various opinions about the existence of solidified water above the firmament, though personally he was inclined to think that the air sustains the water in the form of very fine drops. That much heavier objects may sometimes be supported by air or water he proved by citing examples of cases where this is actually known to happen, as where a needle may be made to float on water. Theodoric of Chartres and William of Conches approached the problem from an even more rationalistic standpoint. Theodoric[819] held that water, when subjected to sufficient heat, turns into “pure air.” On the second day of the Creation the fire element heated the water element in such a way that large portions of the latter rose as high as the moon and were there suspended in vaporous form “above the top of the sky” (super summam coeli). As a result the atmosphere became intercalated between the liquid water of the earth’s surface and this water vapor above the firmament. The firmament itself, Theodoric contended, was merely the air and was so called either because it “firmly” supported that which was above it and enclosed that which was below it or else because it “firmly” gripped the earth on all sides. William of Conches also argued against the possibility of frozen water above the firmament.[820] This, he declared, is quite contrary to reason: frozen water is solid and heavy, and the place for solid and heavy substances in the constitution of the universe is either on or beneath the earth’s surface. Then again, water in or near the celestial sphere—which is the abode of fire—would either extinguish the fire or else itself be consumed. William objected to juggling with the Aristotelian laws of physics. He explained the Biblical text by asserting that the firmament is the atmosphere and that the waters “above” it are in reality nothing more than the clouds within it.[821] On the whole, he concluded that the text should be interpreted allegorically rather than literally.
LITERAL BELIEFS
In decided contrast with these more or less rationalistic theories was Michael Scot’s bold assertion that beyond the realm of fire and above the eighth heavenly sphere comes a “multitude of waters,”[822] or Gervase of Tilbury’s extraordinary account of a sea either in or above the atmosphere. To prove the existence of such a sea Gervase told[823] how “in his time some people coming out of a church in England found an anchor let down by a rope out of the heavens, how there came voices from sailors above trying to loose the anchor, and, finally, how a sailor came down the rope, who, on reaching the earth, died as if drowned in water” (White).[824] William of Auvergne, Platonist of the early thirteenth century and staunch opponent of Aristotelianism, also found no difficulties in the way of literal belief in the waters above the firmament. Ignoring the arguments of Peripatetic physics, he wrote:[825] “Nobody in the world is either amazed or horrified at the presence of fire beneath the waters and more especially beneath the earth. This is proved to the eye by the fiery outbreaks from three mountains (that is Vulcano, Etna, and Chimaera). Why then should one wonder so much that water is found above the heavens?”
Hildegard of Bingen gave expression to some views, probably original with her, regarding the waters above the firmament. In the Causae et curae she speaks of “the waters of the great sea which surrounds the world and forms as it were a flank to those waters which are above the firmament, because the height (summitas) of those which are above and the extreme edge (extremitas) of those which are below the firmament are mutually joined together.”[826] In the Solutiones she characterized the celestial waters, asserting that they neither increase nor decrease (implying perhaps that they are disturbed by no tides) but that they have remained just as they are now since God created them. They are unlike the waters of the earth inasmuch as they are far more fine in texture and entirely invisible to human eyes.[827]
PURPOSE OF THE WATERS
What purpose is served by the waters above the firmament? Gervase of Tilbury declared that they supply the earth with dew.[828] Abelard said that there were two opinions on this subject.[829] The first was that the waters were originally placed in the heavens in order to be used in the Deluge. To this he was opposed, because the Psalms show that the waters were still in existence in David’s time, long after the Flood. If there had not been waters above the firmament in David’s time, how could the latter have sung: “Praise ye the Lord ... ye heavens of heavens and let all the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord”?[830] Abelard was more inclined to favor the second theory, that the waters were intended to temper the heat of the upper celestial fires. He felt, however, with more or less reason, that this entire problem presents great, if not insoluble, difficulties.
THE CONGREGATION OF WATERS
There is an abundance of evidence that the authority of the Bible was invoked to support a theory that the waters beneath the firmament must constitute one unit, or “congregation of waters.” This view, as we saw in Chapter II, was based on the assertion in Genesis that God “gathered together the waters in one place.” Peter Abelard,[831] Peter Comestor,[832] and Hugh of St. Victor[833] all maintained that there are great subterranean reservoirs connected with the seas and rivers of the surface in such a way that the whole hydrographic system of the earth forms a single unit. Prior to the action of God in gathering them together these waters in the primordial chaos were supposed to have been disseminated in the form of vapor, which took up vastly more room than the liquid into which God’s power later concentrated them.
CONNECTION BETWEEN SEAS AND RIVERS
That many writers believed in the connection between the seas and the rivers and in the consequent unity of the waters is shown by numerous passages. Medieval thinkers, as we have seen, were constantly preoccupied by the doctrine of the microcosm, the theory that the human body includes all the elements which constitute the universe and is indeed in itself a miniature replica of the universe. This appears in a statement in the De imagine mundi that the whole interior of the earth is filled with channels like the blood vessels that permeate the body.[834] Whenever and wherever a man digs into the ground he is sure to find water. A constant circulation is maintained between the ocean and the waters of the surface of the land through these passages and through the air.[835]
William of Conches held that the great ocean in the equatorial zone is the source of all dampness in the earth (fons humoris) and that the land is seamed with canals full of water derived from that source.[836] Peter Alphonsi describes the circulation of the waters from the sea into the atmosphere by evaporation, thence in the form of rain to the rivers, and so back to the sea.[837] Peter Comestor, however, held that the river which springs from Paradise and divides in four is the source of all the water of the earth;[838] and Gervase of Tilbury, who follows Comestor in this respect, mentions in another connection that springs have their sources in the sea.[839] Perhaps if he had analyzed the question he would have said that the waters of the sea must find their way at some time through the rivers of Paradise and thence to the springs.
THE EARTH ESTABLISHED ON THE WATERS
The phrase in the Psalms, that God established the earth above or on (super) the waters,[840] also proved puzzling to the thinkers of our period. The easy explanation that such a phenomenon might be due to the arbitrary working of God’s will was not always readily accepted. Some commentators on the Psalms observed dubiously that it surpassed their understanding.[841] Alexander Neckam stated that it might possibly refer to waters beneath the earth, since “Alfraganus [Al-Farghānī] says that the sphere of the waters and of the earth are one.” Saints who had expounded the phrase, he added, tried to explain away the difficulty by referring to the colloquial manner of saying that Paris is founded “on the Seine.” “The truth of the matter, however, is that the terrestrial paradise is above the waters, since it is above the sphere of the moon.”[842] An allegorical interpretation was also resorted to, and the reader was told to conceive of “earth” as being the Church and “the waters” as the many peoples upon which the Church is founded.
Peter Abelard, in an interesting passage in the Expositio in hexaemeron,[843] gave an interpretation of this phrase as well as of the text about the “congregation of the waters” which seems to foreshadow a theory later to be elaborated by Brunetto Latino and destined to gain a firm grip on the hydrographical conceptions of many individuals until as late as the eighteenth century. Abelard wrote: “When the waters receded into one part of the earth, the other parts were uncovered, as was written: ‘God, who established the earth on the waters.’ As any globe may be immersed in water in such a way that one part of it rises above the water, even so the globe of the earth rests in the waters so that one side of it is contiguous with the sea and causes the sea to permeate through its veins, whence springs and rivers take their rise. The waters of this sea, in truth, are congregated into one place and are consequently deeper than if they were diffused, unless, perchance, the fact that they may be drawn off through the veins of the earth makes them less deep.” We have seen that Abelard and William of Conches compared the universe to an egg in which the four parts correspond to the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth.[844] This was the theoretical arrangement of the elements according to the logical application of Aristotle’s physical laws. As a matter of fact, the aqueous sphere does not completely envelop the earth, as it should if this theoretical arrangement were carried out in nature. How, then, could it be explained that a portion of the earth’s surface is not covered by water? Robert Grosseteste, without attempting a physical explanation, answered this question from the teleological point of view, echoing the words of Genesis. “Truly it is a fact,” he wrote, “that, in order that the animals of this earth might have a habitation and refuge, the water receded into the concave parts of the earth and the surface of the land appeared dry and distinct. And so the land with the waters contained upon it is like a sphere of earth.”[845] Later writers were not willing to accept such a simple declaration and looked for physical and mechanical explanations. For instance, Brunetto Latino assigned to the spheres of earth and of water each a different center, placed in such positions in relation to one another that the aqueous sphere covers the sphere of earth to a great depth on one side (the southern hemisphere) but on the opposite side leaves dry the portion inhabited by man.[846] Certainly the passage we have quoted above shows that Abelard may well have had something of this sort in mind.
THE OCEANS AND SEAS
RELATIVE AREAS OF LAND AND SEA
We saw in Chapter I that two theories prevailed in ancient times as to the distribution of land and water: the oceanic theory, that the oikoumene is surrounded by water; and the continental theory, that the oceans of the earth occupy relatively small and enclosed basins. Though the writers of our period held to the oceanic hypothesis, they had various and conflicting notions in regard to the size of the ocean or oceans which surround the known world. The great popularity of Martianus Capella and Macrobius, who both held the doctrine that there are three areas of land corresponding to our oikoumene in the three quarters of the earth’s surface, must have rendered impossible any widespread acceptance of a theory like the one hinted at by Abelard, that all of the earth’s surface except the oikoumene is covered by water; and the definition of the ocean as a zone or hem surrounding the inhabited world, not infrequently given in our period, certainly does not imply the existence of water areas of immense size in comparison with the land areas.[847] Furthermore, the Second Book of Esdras, which, though apocryphal, enjoyed high authority in the Middle Ages,[848] gave the reader an opposite impression. Here it was stated: “Upon the third day thou didst command that the waters should be gathered in the seventh part of the earth: six parts hast thou dried up, and kept them, to the intent that of these some being planted of God and tilled might serve thee.” “Upon the fifth day thou saidst unto the seventh part, where the waters gathered, that it should bring forth living creatures, fowls and fishes: and so it came to pass.” Roger Bacon uses this text from Esdras to reinforce his argument that, relatively speaking, the water surface of the world is very restricted in comparison with the land surface.[849]
EXPLANATION OF UNIFORM LEVEL OF SEA SURFACE
Into the sea there pours at all times a vast volume of water from the rivers. Neckam moralized mournfully on this[850] and compared the flow of fresh water into the salt depths with the way in which greater powers absorb lesser and the way in which the voluptuousness of this world—a sham sweetness—is turned to bitterness and salt; but he did not attempt to explain the puzzling physical problem of why the surface of the sea fails to rise and overflow the lands.[851] Most writers who dealt with the latter problem appealed to the theory of the congregatio aquae: since all the waters of the earth form one unit, they must inevitably make their way back from the sea through various routes to the sources of streams.[852] Other explanations, however, were sometimes brought forward. Adelard of Bath believed that the stars and sun absorb a certain amount of water.[853] The author of the De imagine mundi was convinced that the fresh water entering the sea is partially consumed by the salt of the deeps and partially evaporated by the winds and taken up into the sun.[854]
SALINITY OF THE SEA
The two characteristics of the oceans that distinguish them from bodies of fresh water and have always aroused men’s curiosity are their saltness and their tides. The De imagine mundi gives a popular etymology of the word mare from amarum, meaning bitter or salty.[855] Though there is no attempt in this book to show reasons for the salinity of the sea, the author followed Isidore and Bede in the opinion that the water at great depths is more bitter and salt than near the surface and that evaporation draws off the fresh water only and leaves the bitter and dense elements behind; similarly, that part of the sea water makes its way back to the sources of the springs, deposits its salt in the land, and bursts forth fresh and purified from its passage through the earth. In the Image du monde, on the other hand, there is a naïve explanation of why the sea is salt.[856] Great saline mountains in the deeps are said to be constantly dissolving away and thereby imparting a peculiar character to the water. Adelard of Bath, Gervase of Tilbury, and William of Conches treated the subject a shade more rationally, perhaps, in attributing the saltness to the influence of heat. Adelard says,[857] “I consider the cause of the saltness of the sea to be the heat of the sun and planets. For, since the true ocean passes through the heart of the torrid zone and since the course of the planets runs through the same zone, though obliquely, the ocean must of necessity be heated by such a great heat of the heavenly bodies that it is thereby rendered salt.” This explanation, he adds, is even subject to proof: for along coasts nearest the ocean, sea water “when dried in the sun on the rocks” may readily be converted into salt without any artificial aid; in more distant seas the water must be boiled and reboiled before this effect is produced. Furthermore, in summer all sea water is salter than in winter.
William of Conches[858] and Alexander Neckam[859] also followed Aristotle in believing that water in its purest form has an insipid taste but that it is thickened and rendered salt by the sun’s heat in the torrid ocean, whence it is distributed to the other seas by currents. Gervase of Tilbury tends to exaggerate this theory: we read in the Otia imperialia[860] of a lake in the County of Aix, near Arles, the waters of which are congealed into ice by the cold of winter and into salt by the heat of August. This led Gervase to conclude that it would be impossible to sail around the earth, because the all-encircling ocean would be frozen stiff in the north and thickened into solid salt in the south.
TIDES
If we discard fanciful ideas like that of Richard, prior of St. Victor in Paris (died 1173), to the effect that the tides are produced by the breathing of some great submarine monster or spirit,[861] we find two distinct groups of tidal theories prevalent in the twelfth century: as Duhem defines them, the physical and the astrological. The astrological theories, which explained the tides by the influence of the moon, had been expounded before the period we are studying by Posidonius, Pliny, Bede, and the Moslem Abū Maʿshar. The physical theories had been set forth by Macrobius, who had believed that the tides were due to the impact of ocean currents, and Paul the Deacon, who had attributed them to the action of great whirlpools. Although twelfth-century students added little to these earlier opinions, they made some remarkable combinations of them, and their observations were distinguished by a few close records of actual tidal phenomena.[862]
Lunar Causation
Bernard Sylvester explained the tides by lunar causation alone[863] and attributed to the moon the power of attracting and repelling not only the waters but also terrestrial substances,[864] inasmuch as the moon is the nearest planet to the earth, the largest, and consequently the most powerful.[865]
In the following century we find that Robert Grosseteste saw in the effects of lunar rays upon the bottom of the sea sufficient cause for the ebb and flood. If in their broad outlines the ideas of the bishop of Lincoln are plain enough, the individual steps of his argument are neither clear nor coherent. They are of sufficient interest, nevertheless, to justify an attempt at interpreting them.[866] We have already alluded to Robert’s theory of rays emanating from the celestial bodies in the shape of cones or “pyramids” and to his principle that the power of these rays is inverse to the obliquity of the angle at which they meet the earth’s surface and to the length of the pyramids.[867] When the moon is rising, Grosseteste explains in the De natura locorum,[868] the rays are very oblique and the pyramids long: hence the power of the rays is much too weak to disperse vapors that have accumulated on the sea floor or to draw these vapors up into the air. The result is that the vapors tend to displace the waters in the depths, to rise in bubbles to the surface, and thus to produce flood tides. As the moon approaches the meridian the rays become less oblique, the pyramids shorter, and the lunar power consequently greater. The moon now disperses and consumes the vapors and draws them up into the air from the depths of the sea. By the time our satellite reaches the meridian, the vapors are entirely consumed, “and, since the cause ceases, the effect also ceases; and the waters of the sea naturally flow back into their proper place in order not to create a vacuum.” Hence the ebb begins.
Grosseteste does not make clear what generates the vapors, though he probably meant us to assume that they were produced by the heat due to the reflection of the moon’s rays upon the sea floor. In another treatise, the De impressionibus elementorum,[869] he explains how reflected rays, though not necessarily the rays of the moon, in passing through a transparent body of water may create heat at the bottom.
The problem of the flood tide when the moon is in the opposite hemisphere of the heavens still remained. Grosseteste’s obscure explanation of this runs about as follows: “Many try to give a reason for this difficult circumstance on the grounds that opposite quarters of the universe are of the same composition (commixtionis) and consequently produce the same effects. But this explanation falls short, since it is false to assert that there are any actual replicas of the stars of one quarter of the heavens in another quarter, inasmuch as the earth interposes its bulk between a planet in one quarter and the quarter opposite. Moreover, even were this explanation true, an explanation of the original cause would be required. That is to say, it would be necessary to ask why the opposite quarters are of the same composition and consequently exert the same effect. The fact is that the reflection of rays solves this problem, since the rays of the moon are multiplied on the stellar heaven. Because the stellar heaven is an opaque body, we are consequently not able to see it, though it nevertheless is very luminous according to Alpetragius and Messalahe [sic]. Other reflected rays fall on the opposite quarter at right angles.”[870]
Terrestrial Causation
Most writers found that the astrological, or lunar, theory alone was insufficient to explain all the peculiarities of the tides and made appeal, as well, to physical theories—in particular to that of Macrobius. This is given in varying terms by Adelard of Bath, Lambert of St. Omer, William of Conches, and Giraldus Cambrensis. Macrobius, as we have already observed, had conceived of four ocean currents issuing out of the great equatorial ocean and flowing north and south in the girdling ocean which includes the poles.[871] These currents run together somewhere in the polar regions; the waters rebound on themselves (ex repercussione ingurgitur retro mare) and in this way cause the ebb and flow. Lambert of St. Omer in his Liber floridus seems to have accepted the Macrobian theory much as it stands,[872] but Adelard harbored doubts as to the sufficiency of the impact of the waters against each other to produce a tidal rebound and thought that some mountain or other mass of land must interpose to produce such an effect.[873]
William of Conches cites two theories of tidal controls:[874] the first is that of Macrobius; the second, confusingly stated, suggests Adelard’s hypothesis of an interposing mass of land. William says, in effect, that the tides are due in part to the existence of mountains submerged beneath the sea, against which the waters are attracted forward and then repelled, producing an oscillating motion. As to this, we may well be led to inquire how Macrobius, Adelard, and William explained this oscillating motion, for certainly two steadily flowing currents meeting each other or running against submerged reefs would not create any such motion. Unfortunately in this we are left unsatisfied by our medieval writers, who characteristically here, as often elsewhere, were content, when stating that one phenomenon causes another, to leave entirely to the imagination the explanation of the manner in which such causation is actually effected.
William did not rule out all lunar control over the ebb and flood but explained the spring and neap tides by variations in the moon’s power of heating and drying the atmosphere. This power, he thought, is at a minimum both when the moon is full and when it is new. Consequently we have high spring tides at these times, and vice versa. William’s theory is the reverse of Abū Maʿshar’s:[875] that the tides are caused by the active attraction by the moon of the humid elements on the earth’s surface. William fails to show us why the tides should be in flood when the moon is rising toward the meridian and why spring tides should occur when there is a full moon. Abū Maʿshar, on the other hand, fails to explain why there is a flood tide when the moon is on the other side of the earth, in the opposite celestial hemisphere.
Alexander Neckam gives what is, to say the least, an unsatisfactory treatment of the tides.[876] After quoting the scientific opinions of others, he remarks that to explain the ebb and flow of the waters is a problem that cannot be solved. Then, in his customary vein, he adds the moral observation that the tides are like the persecutions of the Christians and that they should not fill one with too much despair, for after they have risen they always subside again in the due course of time.[877]
William the Breton wondered at the tides but, like Neckam, refrained from trying to explain their cause and said that God alone understands this and no man can comprehend it either now or ever.[878] He was amazed that such a wide, deep, and powerful stream as the Seine at Rouen could be forced back upon itself by the waters of the sea and made to flow in the opposite direction through a space of land across which its normal current could scarcely pass in three days. Was this due to the fact that fresh water is less powerful than salt? Or does the fresh water find the salt water odious and recoil before it? Or does the stream do reverence, as it were, to its mother, the sea, falling back before her and then when the tide turns following behind her respectfully? None of these explanations was William ready to accept as true. “For us who live our human lot here below, it is sufficient to know the fact; it is not allowed to us to know the cause.”[879]
Giraldus Cambrensis’ Tidal Studies
The most elaborate tidal studies of our period are in the pages of Giraldus Cambrensis’ Topographia Hiberniae, where we find a combination of the astrological theory of Abū Maʿshar, the whirlpool theory of Paul the Deacon, and the ocean-current theory of Macrobius. Giraldus said that when the moon passes the meridian the waters begin to recede from the coasts of Britain and to retire into hidden submarine reservoirs.[880] The moon, being the heavenly body that controls all things humid on the earth, when full causes the tides to rise to unusual heights. A little further on in his discussion, Giraldus explains that at the four opposite parts of the ocean there is a force that violently attracts the sea water, producing a sort of periodic swelling and sinking; this is connected in some manner with a belief in Giraldus’ mind that greater quantities of fresh water enter the sea at the extremities of the earth and in the vicinity of the poles than elsewhere, though on what he based this supposition and how it produced the results which he ascribes to it, he does not explain. Giraldus’ theory also owes much to Macrobius’ hypothesis of the effects of the collision of ocean currents on the tides, as well as to Paul the Deacon’s whirlpool theory, for he explains elsewhere[881] that philosophers mention the existence of four whirlpools at the opposite ends of the earth and that some people attribute to these the causation of tides and storms of wind. Each of the whirlpools resembles a great vortex in the northern seas towards which the waters of the sea rush together, to be absorbed in secret caverns as if in an abyss; ships approaching too near are sucked in and destroyed.
The most interesting feature of Giraldus’ tidal studies, however, are not these general speculations regarding causes but some very neat observations made on the British and Irish coasts. In the first place, he remarks on the choppy water of the Irish Sea, which presumably he connects with tide rips.[882] He then goes on to discuss the difference in the hour of high water at various Irish ports, at Milford Haven in Wales, and at Bristol in England. When the tide is at the half-ebb in Dublin, at Milford Haven it is at the half-flood, and near Bristol just beginning the rise. Let us see what the facts of the case are at the present day.[883] On February 1, 1919, half-ebb occurred at Dublin at about 2:30 P. M., half-flood at Milford Haven only about an hour and a half later, and low water had occurred at Bristol half an hour earlier. In other words Giraldus’ observations on the relative times of the tides at these three points were unusually accurate. Furthermore, he explains that at Wicklow, on the Irish coast opposite Wales, the water falls at the same time that it rises throughout the sea in general. When Giraldus here speaks of the “sea in general” he perhaps had in mind tidal observations made at other points on the coast not far to the south. Modern tide tables show that near Arklow, only about fourteen miles away, it is low water some two hours and a half earlier than at Wicklow. The water, consequently, is rising at Arklow for two hours and a half while it is still falling at Wicklow. That Giraldus was familiar with Arklow is shown by the fact that he mentions a river entering the sea there and describes a curious rock in the harbor.[884]
Finally, Giraldus states[885] that when the moon has passed the meridian the waters first recede from the coasts of Britain but that on the Irish coasts in the vicinity of Dublin full flood corresponds to this recession of the waters. In the vicinity of Wexford, however, flood waters do not correspond with the flood at Dublin but rather with the flood waters on the British coast at Milford Haven. Giraldus was mistaken, if we are right in interpreting his words to mean that he thought that the tidal undulation which produces high water at Dublin is a different wave from that of Wexford or Milford Haven. No tidal undulation enters the Irish Sea from the north, and consequently the ebb and flood at all of these places is caused by the same wave. On the other hand, this wave reaches Dublin nearly five hours later than it reaches Wexford and Milford on the opposite shore, and the accuracy of Giraldus’ data on the time of these tides is further confirmed by modern tide tables, which show that flood water at the Welsh port may occur only twenty-four minutes earlier than at Rosslare Point, the entrance to Wexford Harbor.
It would be interesting if we could know how Giraldus gathered these data. Probably they were pieced together from incidental observations of sailors or fishermen, for certainly no systematic investigation of tidal phenomena could well have been undertaken at Giraldus’ time.[886] It is typical of an immense amount of close and accurate knowledge that has always existed along with ignorance and superstition among the more humble workers of this world, knowledge that until recent years has but rarely found literary expression.
OTHER MARINE PHENOMENA NOTED BY GIRALDUS
Giraldus certainly was not always so fortunate in his discussion of marine phenomena. He taxes our credulity a little when he tells of a rock in Arklow harbor on one side of which the water rises while it is falling on the other,[887] though this may perhaps have resulted from some local play of currents and eddies. It is less easy to find an explanation of a story which he relates of a recession of the sea at “Crebonensus” (Proconnesus?) near Constantinople.[888] Here, during eight days at the time of the festival of St. Clement, the waters fell back in order to allow pilgrims to go to the saint’s shrine. This kind of miracle, to be sure, had the support of Biblical authority in the story of the parting of the waters of the Red Sea to permit the passing of the children of Israel; and we find a similar tale in the Otia imperialia,[889] where Gervase asserts that the Sea of Pamphylia was divided for Alexander the Great, because God wished to destroy the Persian kingdom by means of the Macedonian. The lake (or river) which in the legend surrounded the church of St. Thomas in India was also said to go dry at regular intervals to permit pilgrims to approach.[890]
In his description of South Wales, Giraldus Cambrensis gives an account of marine encroachments on the land and perhaps of coastal subsidence. A great storm on this sandy coast laid bare a forest hitherto covered by the waters. Trunks of trees appeared with marks of the ax upon them, fresh as if cut only the day before. Giraldus was convinced that the marks dated from inconceivable antiquity, perhaps even from the time of the Flood.[891] The wood was overwhelmed, he said, by the constant and ever increasingly violent advance of the sea; and certainly it is well known in modern days that the waves long have been eating into the coast of Pembrokeshire and that the uncovering by storms of buried forests and stumps is a commonplace occurrence there. Perhaps we are justified in interpreting Giraldus’ remarks by assuming that the forest had not, as he states, previously been covered by water but more probably by marine sands or muds, which subsequently were removed from the stumps by storm waves.
ST. BRANDAN AND THE SPIRIT OF THE SEA
Less scientific—or perhaps we had better say less prosaic—than the writings we have just been discussing but fully as replete with understanding of the ocean and its various moods, is the legend of the wanderings of St. Brandan. The style and spirit of this entire story shows that it must have been composed by men filled with a sense of the immensity and mystery of the Atlantic.[892] Probably the tale had its roots in the reports of actual voyagings of Irishmen blown far out to sea. Although there is much of the marvelous and supernatural borrowed from older tradition, the tone of the legend as a whole rings true to nature. Certainly it was not written by a landsman. At one time St. Brandan and his companions sailed north for three days, and the sea became “as it were coagulated through an excess of calmness.”[893] It has been suggested that this refers to the semi-solid “Liver Sea” of Germanic legend, itself perhaps an echo of the reports of Pytheas and other classical writers about clotted sea waters north of Thule and in the Western Ocean.[894] On another occasion the travelers came in sight of a high column of clearest crystal apparently not far away, though it took three days to reach it.[895] So great was its height that they could scarce discern the summit, and as they drew near they saw that it was covered by a silvery canopy of marvelously fine texture. They passed through a hole in the canopy and entered a sea whose waters were so clear that the base of the column could be seen resting on the earth at the bottom of the sea. For an entire day they sailed along one side of the column. If we discard from all this what is obviously fabulous or borrowed from the vision of Ezekiel[896] or from the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation,[897] may we not be justified in supposing that the sight of a great iceberg flashing in the sun gave rise to the story of the crystalline column and that the canopy represented curtains of fog hanging about its flanks?
St. Brandan and his crew also had other glimpses of the bottom of the sea[898] through waters of such remarkable transparency that they thought they could almost touch the beasts of various kinds lying there. When mass was said on board, these beasts rose and circled about the ship but did not molest the saint and his party. After seven days’ voyage with sails set they had scarcely crossed this stretch of translucent water.
BOTTOM OF THE SEA
We find other accounts of the bottom of the sea and even of visits made to it, in the legendary writings of our period. Gervase of Tilbury[899] tells of an individual named Nicholas Pappas, a dweller on the shores of the Strait of Messina, who was forced by King Roger II of Sicily to dive into the waters. Being well known to the submarine monsters, he escaped all danger from molestation by them and afterwards used to tell about a grove beneath the “Strait of Pharo,” how the tides wash first one way and then the other through the branches of the trees, and how he had seen submarine mountains, valleys, fields and woods, and trees with acorns on them. Gervase adds that our faith in the truth of this story may be increased by noting the fact that acorns are often washed ashore along the neighboring coasts. Nicholas also used to occupy himself by warning ships of the approach of storms and showing sailors how to calm the waters with oil. At a later period the legend became current[900] of a man named “Piscis” or “The Fish” (possibly this should be substituted for the “Pappas” of Gervase) who was accustomed to swim under the Strait of Messina, having been sent there in the first place to rescue a chalice cast into the sea by King Roger.
Alexander the Great, according to one version of the Romance of his adventures, also made a visit to the sea floor.[901] After he had crossed a desert infested with ferocious beasts, he called his companions together and complained that, in view of the fact that he had conquered the greater part of the world, he knew enough about the inhabitants of the land and now wanted to learn something of the inhabitants of the sea. He then proceeded to descend in a glass cask to the bottom of the deeps; there, among other things, he noted that the large fish eat the small ones, an observation whose novelty hardly seems to have justified the effort expended to make it.
THE WATERS OF THE LANDS
Let us turn now to the waters of the lands—ground water, sources (wells, springs, fountains), rivers, and finally lakes.
GROUND WATER
In our period the existence of water in various forms underneath the surface of the land was well understood. Bernard Sylvester says:[902] “A watery humor is diffused all through the lap of the land and makes streams and rivers, swamps and lakes.” William of Conches attributed[903] the origin of the water in springs and wells to (1) underground streams, or, as he called them, “cataracts,” which pass through wells en route from one part of the earth to another, and (2) the sweat of the earth (sudor terrae), or minute particles of water percolating through small holes in the earth much as human sweat percolates through the pores of the body. William maintained that the existence of underground watercourses as a source of well water was proved by the fact that wells near rivers are constantly full and that whatever happens to the water of a well in a given district is likely to happen to the water of all the other wells in the vicinity, showing that there must be some intercommunication between them. That springs and wells were constantly replenished in dry times was proof to William—as to modern geographers—of the existence of the sweat of the earth, or what we now call “ground water,” which permeates the interstices in rocks, gravel, and sand alike. It is possible, however, that William believed that the sudor terrae was actually generated by the earth. This was undoubtedly the opinion of Adelard of Bath, who discusses the subject in terms very similar to those of William.[904]
THE SEA AS THE SOURCE OF THE WATERS OF THE LAND
Most of this subterranean water, as we have already seen, was supposed during the Middle Ages to come from the sea, whence it made its way inland either through the atmosphere in the form of rain or directly through the land. We need cite but two texts to show how firmly this idea was rooted in the medieval mind. One is from a sermon of Bernard of Clairvaux, the other from a questionnaire prepared by the Emperor Frederick II. It would perhaps be hard to find two men who stood at more diametrically opposite intellectual poles, and yet both, in this case, shared the same conviction.
Bernard, characteristically, treated the matter symbolically. “The sea,” he said, “is the source of fountains and rivers; the Lord Jesus Christ is the source of every kind of virtue and knowledge.... What? Are not pure purposes, just judgments, holy aspirations, one and all streams from that same source? If all waters seek incessantly to return to the sea, making their way thither sometimes by hidden and subterranean channels, so that they may go forth from it again in continual and untiring circuit, becoming visible once more to man and available for his service, why are not those spiritual streams rendered back constantly and without reserve to their legitimate source, that they may not cease to water the fields of our hearts? Let the rivers of divers graces return from whence they came, that they may flow forth anew. Let the heavenly shower rise again to its heavenly source that it may be poured anew and still more plentifully upon the earth” (Eales’s translation).[905]
Frederick II propounded to Michael Scot a list of questions on matters of cosmology and physical geography. Regarding most of these matters the Emperor was in doubt and perplexity, but concerning the waters of land and sea he was sure. “For we greatly wonder at these things,” he said, “knowing already that all waters come from the sea and passing through divers lands and cavities return to the sea, which is the bed and receptacle of all running waters” (Haskins’ translation).[906]
A most elaborate discussion of the qualities of the waters of the lands is found in the Causae et curae of Hildegard of Bingen.[907] Hildegard likewise assumed that the water of wells, springs, and rivers is derived from the ocean which surrounds the earth.[908] She also believed that the nature of the water varies widely in different parts of the ocean and consequently that the quality of the water of the land depends on the part of the ocean from which it comes. Furthermore, she maintained that some of the waters of the sea do not lose their salinity in passing through the land but that other waters are rendered fresh before they appear upon the earth’s surface. Upon the basis of these assumptions Hildegard proceeded to analyze the qualities, sanitary, medicinal, and gastronomic, of waters both fresh and salt according to their derivation from the four cardinal points and from the northeast and northwest. Her analysis was meant as a practical guide for those who wished to use water for drinking and bathing with a minimum risk of disease, though she fails to explain how one is to determine the ultimate source of a specific spring, well, or river. Without undertaking a detailed examination of Hildegard’s argument, we may note that, unlike Giraldus Cambrensis, who regarded the East as the fountain of poisons, she believed that the waters of the Orient were the purest and most healthful of all. On the other hand, she held that the putrid and corrupt elements of the earth were concentrated in the Western Sea and that waters coming from that quarter were very dangerous unless boiled.[909] The Southern Sea harbored an immense quantity of venomous worms and small animals, and consequently waters from it were not good for cooking or drinking. As we shall see in the next chapter,[910] Giraldus Cambrensis’ discussion of the different qualities of the East and West was probably based in some measure on observation. The same can hardly be said of Hildegard’s theories. We cannot but feel that they were the offspring of an unusually ingenious imagination, though the prophetic abbess undoubtedly attributed them to divine inspiration.
Hildegard went on to assert that swamp waters are dangerous from whatever part of the earth they come, since they contain vile and noxious damp elements of the ground and the poisonous spume of worms. Such waters should not be used unboiled except for washing. Well and spring waters which flow from swamps are equally bad, though as a general rule all waters arising from an unsanitary source become purer the farther they flow. Water from deep wells is usually better and smoother (suavior) for cooking, drinking, and other uses of man than the water of flowing springs; the latter, in turn, is better than river water, which should be avoided because of the impurities it receives from the air. The water of small, clear, pure rills is excellent for both men and cattle.
EFFECT OF LAND ON WATERS WHICH SPRING FROM IT
The land itself might produce varying effects on the water within it, and thus on the wells and fountains which spring from it. In summer, William of Conches tells us,[911] the pores of the earth are open, and the warm vapor (fumus) contained therein can escape. Consequently the heat of the earth is loosed, and the springs and wells are cooler than in winter, when the cold constricts the earth’s pores and keeps the heat in. It is very easy to understand what gave rise to such a theory when we consider the fact that water always preserves a more uniform temperature than the surrounding air. Hot and putrid springs, the De imagine mundi tells us,[912] are caused by the ground water coming into contact with subterranean caves full of sulphur that is sometimes ignited by the winds. In some places serpents, by poisoning the earth and the ground water which passes through it, indirectly cause the water sources of a region to become noxious.[913] Michael Scot, in a somewhat repetitious and not wholly clear passage, explained in effect that the hot and boiling springs of Italy and Sicily are produced by waters arising out of subterranean cavities where the native heat of the interior of the earth in combination with the winds produces a violent combustion of sulphur and “white-hot rocks” (petre calidissime).[914]
MIRACULOUS WELLS AND SPRINGS; GEYSERS
Wells and springs, like lakes, seem to have appealed to the imagination of men at all times, and the description of their peculiarities occupied disproportionate space in medieval books of marvels. Giraldus Cambrensis mentions wells with petrifying properties in Ulster, Norway, Britain, and Cappadocia;[915] and Saxo Grammaticus expresses great wonder at a spring in Iceland the exhalation or foam of which is capable of turning the softest substances almost instantaneously into the hardest stone.[916] Gervase of Tilbury describes a salt well in the diocese of Worcester.[917] Though these are reasonable enough, it is a little more difficult to explain Giraldus’ belief in wells which ebb and flow like the tides,[918] especially when he insists that some of them are situated far from the sea.
Giraldus describes an absolutely miraculous spring in the province of Munster in Ireland.[919] When touched or even looked at by a man, this spring will proceed to inundate the entire province with rain. The rain does not stop until a priest, virgin from birth and especially deputed for the purpose, celebrates mass in a chapel not far away and, having blessed the waters, conciliates the spring by sprinkling into it the milk of a one-colored cow. Giraldus remarked parenthetically that this was a barbaric ceremony and quite lacking in reason. Gervase of Tilbury tells of a lake in Great Britain which would produce a storm when certain words were chanted over it and of a fountain in the Kingdom of Arles which would cause rain if a stick or stone were thrown into it.[920] These tales, indeed, are but examples of a widespread belief among primitive and ignorant folk that man can attain the secret of the magical control of the elements. Sir James G. Frazer cites them with similar examples from other peoples and ages as illustrations of the doctrine that a “way of constraining the rain-god is to disturb him in his haunts. This seems to be the reason why rain is supposed to follow the troubling of a sacred spring.”[921]
In treating the water element in his De naturis rerum, Alexander Neckam rushes over the problems of the four rivers of Paradise and of why the sea is salt to come to a discussion of springs,[922] about which he relates many marvels, appending to each a little moral lesson. For example, he tells of two founts in Italy, one of which turns the feathers of white birds black, and the other the feathers of black birds white. He suggests the analogy of the former to contemporary worldly knowledge that darkens minds glowing in the brightness of innocence; and of the latter to true wisdom that renders serene minds obscured by the shades of vice.[923] Then he goes on to discourse about springs that rise when some one throws a red cloth into them; a spring that boils up with much noise, as if in annoyance, when men talk near it; a spring that gives flame to an unburnt torch and puts out a lighted one; and a spring whose water, when thrown upon a certain rock in its neighborhood, causes a storm of wind, rain, and hail to arise. These are but a few of many remarkable sources that Neckam describes and places in various parts of the world, drawing on Solinus, Isidore, and the mass of medieval pseudo-science that flourished in all countries.
More convincing is Saxo Grammaticus’ circumstantial account of certain water holes in Iceland. In these the water sometimes wells up in abundance and is thrown high into the air in a shower of drops. At other times the flow is quiescent, and the water seems to be sucked into the holes deep in the earth where it scarce may be seen. This description is obviously based on reports Saxo had received from eyewitnesses of the geysers of Iceland.[924]
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH
The most remarkable and most sought-for of sources has always been the Fountain of Youth. In the first letter of Prester John we find the description[925] of a grove at the foot of Mount Olympus, not far from Paradise, in Central Asia. In this grove there is a spring that wafts forth odors of all kinds, varying from hour to hour, by day and by night. Its waters give eternal youth to any one who bathes therein, restoring him to the bodily strength and vigor that he possessed at the age of thirty-two. Closely parallel to this account, though probably not derived from it, is a description in the Romance of Alexander[926] of a fountain that receives its waters from the Euphrates, one of the four rivers of Paradise, and which four times daily has the power of rejuvenation. Two old men who jumped in emerged looking exactly as if they were thirty years old. Akin to the Fountain of Youth, but less powerful in its action, is a spring described by Gervase[927] in Staffordshire, England, to which he attributed the ability of restoring energy to men when weary. But this is true of any fresh mountain pool.
RIVERS
As to the source of rivers, we need add nothing to what has already been said about the “congregation of waters” (congregatio aquae) and about springs and fountains. It was commonly thought in medieval and classical times that two or more rivers may rise from one source and flow off in diverse directions. The most striking example of this was furnished by the Scriptural four rivers of Paradise, which, though rising from one stream, were believed to find their way to at least three different seas. In commenting on the rivers of Paradise, Gervase of Tilbury expressly asserts[928] that not only is it possible for more than one stream to rise from the same headwaters but that the same rivers may again mingle and again separate their waters. Giraldus Cambrensis describes[929] how the Shannon of Ireland rises in a lake between Connaught and Munster and thence divides into two branches flowing in opposite ways, one southward to the “Sea of Brandan,” the other northward into the Northern Ocean. It is true that in regions of imperfect drainage development, like Ireland, northern North America, and parts of the Amazon Valley, two small streams occasionally do spring from a single source. On the other hand, it is entirely contrary to the laws of hydrography that two or more full-grown rivers should either leave a lake and depart across country in different directions or, except in the case of deltas, owe their origin to the separation of the waters of a single large stream. Classical and medieval geographers, however, were not acquainted with this law, and the words of the Bible justified the writers of geographical books, even down to as late a date as the eighteenth century, in making broad rivers divide into separate branches and wander at random over the country.
Giraldus Cambrensis noted several other peculiarities of rivers.[930] For example, he remarked that the stream at Wicklow which flows across the harbor (we may presume in a channel through mud flats) is brackish at ebb tide; a similar river at Arklow is fresh.[931] Tide water, he said, does not mingle with the River Conway in North Wales.[932] Elsewhere he observed that the term aber in Welsh is applied to all those places where one stream flows into another.[933] The River Dee is not affected by rains, but the winds make it rise.[934] It changes its bed every year, and, as its course forms the boundary between England and Wales, these changes are interpreted as omens foretelling whether the English or the Welsh are going to be the more successful in their combats with each other during the succeeding year.[935]
THE NILE FLOOD
In his consideration of the problem of the flood of the Nile, Abelard gives a curious example of the symbolic interpretation of scriptural and geographic matters which was also characteristic of the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux.[936] Isidore had followed earlier classical authorities in describing the flood as due to the building up, by the etesian winds, of sand bars at the mouth of the river during the winter.[937] Abelard, from Bede’s rendering of Isidore’s text,[938] adopted the same theory in his discussion of the Nile in the Expositio in hexaemeron.[939] He also discussed the Nile flood in a sermon on the text, “And the Lord, the God of hosts, is He who toucheth the earth, and it shall melt: and all that dwell therein shall mourn: and it shall rise up as a river and shall run down as the river of Egypt” (Amos ix, 5). In the sermon[940] he compared the rising of the Lord at the resurrection to the Nile: as the river fructifies the land, so the Lord strengthened the despairing hearts of his disciples. Abelard then quoted the passage from Bede just mentioned, and proceeded to interpret it as follows: The Nile coming down from Paradise is like unto the wisdom of God descending from above to give us to drink as from a fountain. Egypt is like unto the carnal darkness of this world. Its river enters the sea through seven mouths, which are obstructed when the wind blows and causes the backing up of the waters that can find no outlet. Thus, after the resurrection of the Lord but before the sevenfold grace of his spirit could find its way out into the broad sea of the nations, it was impeded as were the waters of the Nile. In other words, the apostles, through fear of the Jews, were held in Judea blinded, as it were, and for some time were not permitted to go forth as if from Egypt and through their preaching to bring about a rebirth of mankind. What does the wind represent, Abelard asks, if not the temptation of the devil? And what the sand, if not those men who at the turning of the ages wavered this way and that, held fast by earthly desires and temptations? [941]
It is hardly necessary to point out the contrast between this sort of geographical speculation and that of William of Conches. Better perhaps than any other text with which the writer is familiar, these ideas of Abelard illustrate that absorption, so often characteristic of medieval thought, of scientific and geographical interests into those of theology.
LAKES
Abundance of lakes is characteristic of glaciated countries like New England, Switzerland, Scotland, Sweden, Wales, and Ireland. Giraldus Cambrensis was impressed by the number of lakes in Ireland, where, he says,[942] they are more numerous than in any other part of the world. Giraldus and Gervase of Tilbury describe many lacustrine marvels.
In tracing the history of Ireland, Giraldus says [943] that about three hundred years after the Deluge four ponds suddenly broke forth from the bowels of the earth and that this was repeated at the time of the third colonization of Ireland under Neimhith.[944] Two ponds in Wales [945] were said to have burst their bounds and overflowed the neighborhood on the night of the death of Henry I. Before a great war, during which a province of central Wales was ravaged, a certain lake turned green, and old men described a similar portent just before the devastation of Wales by “Hoel, son of Moreduc” (Howel, son of Meredith).[946] The Lake of Brecknock in Wales appears sometimes a greenish color and sometimes ruddy as if penetrated by veins of blood.[947] Perhaps Giraldus was reminded of this by the mud-streaked appearance of mountain tarns after a rain, but it is less easy to explain the buildings, pastures, gardens, and orchards which he declares were occasionally visible beneath the surface. On the other hand, all who are familiar with inland waters in cold latitudes know the booming sounds they emit when frozen, which Giraldus compares to the moaning of a large herd of animals. These noises, he said, were caused by the sudden outrush of air imprisoned beneath the ice. At the top of Mount Snowdon, according to Giraldus, there are two lakes, one containing a floating island blown by the winds.[948] The most interesting lake with which Giraldus deals, however, is Lough Neagh in Ireland. This, he said,[949] lies in Ulster and is of remarkable size, thirty miles by fifteen. Though the relative proportions are right, the actual size is exaggerated, the dimensions being fifteen English miles long by from five to eight broad. The origin of the lake he attributed to an inundation that came as a punishment for the unnatural crimes of the natives of the region. This led him to a comparison of the story of Lough Neagh with the Biblical history of the destruction of the Pentapolis and the origins of the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea has always exerted a potent fascination over the minds of men. The uncanny natural features of its basin, and the terrible story associated with them, have been objects of curiosity from the very earliest times. Gervase of Tilbury goes into some detail on the subject.[950] The five cities, he says, were submerged, on account of the sins of their inhabitants, in a salt and sterile lake called the Dead Sea, where neither bird nor fish can live. The sea is open to no ship; nay, it even rises over everything not impregnated with bitumen, probably because of the living men within it. If any one by any means immerses a living creature in it, the living being immediately leaps out.[951] A burning torch will float on the lake, an extinct one will sink. There was certainly an infernal quality about the Dead Sea, and it was even supposed that beneath its waters there was an entrance into Hell.
Gervase tells of the discovery of another mouth of Hell near Pozzuoli in southern Italy.[952] A bishop John of Pozzuoli was said to have discovered a pond whose waters were opaque but would become clear and translucent when oil was thrown upon them. Exploring about its shores one day, the bishop heard the sounds of lamentation coming from beneath the waters and, casting oil upon them, was horrified to behold, far down in the depths, the gateway to the infernal regions! Elsewhere[953] Gervase tells of a lake on the summit of Mount Cavagum (Canigou) in Catalonia, inhabited by devils, who raise a storm when stones are thrown in to disturb them.
IX. THE LANDS
The inquiring curiosity of men as well as of children is not first stimulated by those things which seem most usual and commonplace. The latter are taken for granted. Science originates rather in the wonder aroused by the extraordinary or by the impressive. Only after a long process of development does it turn to the study of the homely and the obvious.
The truth of this is illustrated in the medieval geography of the lands. Geomorphology, or the science of land forms, was very much in its infancy during our period and for many centuries thereafter. Only rarely did the man of the Middle Ages seek for an explanation of the origin of the familiar features of the earth’s surface which he saw around him day by day. If he described a landscape in terms that often reveal love of its beauty or, at least, appreciation of its productive capacity, he was almost totally blind to the possibilities of profounder analysis of its nature. A plain was a plain, a valley a valley because God had made it so.
The present chapter will deal mainly with the character of these external, unscientific descriptions of land forms. The attempt will be made, however, to point out a few notable exceptions to the general rule, a few cases where men sought for a deeper meaning in the aspects of nature than the meaning written upon the surface.
CLASSIFICATION OF LAND AREAS
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE SUBDIVISIONS
There are two ways of subdividing and classifying areas of land, the quantitative and the qualitative.
Adelard of Bath gives us an example of a quantitative subdivision where he tells in his De eodem et diverso[954] that the inventor of geometry split the known world into parts (or, perhaps, continents), the parts into provinces, the provinces into regions, the regions into localities, the localities into territories, the territories into fields, the fields into centuries, and the centuries into jugera (acres).
The author of the De imagine mundi, borrowing from Isidore,[955] makes a qualitative subdivision.[956] Land, he says, may be grouped under six different heads, terra being the name applied to the entire element of earth. The six kinds of terra are: (1) tellus, fertile; (2) humus, infertile, because of an excess of moisture; (3) arida, waterless, like Libya, dried up by the sun; (4) sicca, rather less dry than arida, but where, nevertheless, all precipitation quickly disappears, as in Judea; (5) solum, so called from its solidity, as mountainous land (a soliditate ut sunt montana); and, finally (6) ops, or wealthy land, like that of India, where gold and gems abound.[957]
In addition to such variations in the character of the lands, it was a common view that certain localities are by nature either peculiarly noxious or else peculiarly free from poisons. Gervase of Tilbury notes[958] an area near Pozzuoli which resembled a dried-up swamp but proved fatal to all animals venturing upon it. Elsewhere[959] he repeats, in connection with the tree of life spoken of by Alexander in his supposed letter to Aristotle, a widespread tradition of a land where no man could die even though he were decrepit with old age and might wish for relief from the cares of this world.[960] The Image du monde[961] attributes a similar quality to an island in the northern seas. When the inhabitants wished to die they had themselves taken to Tylle (Thule), where they might expire in peace. Giraldus Cambrensis describes[962] such an island in a lake in Ireland, as well as an island where no females could live.
GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS’ COMPARISON OF EAST AND WEST
Probably, however, the most striking study of the varying qualities of different regions is Giraldus Cambrensis’ elaborate comparison of Orient and Occident.[963] In Chapter VII we discussed this writer’s belief that the atmosphere of the West is far healthier than that of the East. But not only is the air better, he asserted, but also the land itself, and of all the lands Ireland is the most healthy. No venomous reptiles can exist in the Emerald Isle. Giraldus attributed this phenomenon not to the beneficent work of St. Patrick in driving out the snakes[964] (this story, he said, was merely a pleasant fiction) but rather to some natural deficiency in Irish soil that had existed long before St. Patrick’s time. He explained further that no poisonous reptiles could survive in Ireland even when they were brought there;[965] toads, when carried over on ships, burst open as soon as they are thrown ashore; and the dust of Ireland, when sprinkled on poisonous creatures of any sort, kills them instantly.[966] The East, on the other hand, Giraldus called[967] a fountain of poisons (fons venenorum), and he waxed most eloquent on its terrors:[968] poisonous animals abound, the waters are always polluted, and death lurks on every hand; but the farther away from this Oriental source of poison one travels, the less its effect, until in the extreme West it exerts no influence at all, just as the sun’s rays are weaker the farther one goes from beneath the zodiac.
This distinction between Eastern and Western climate and conditions of terrain may to a limited extent have been based on actual observation. Undoubtedly the pilgrim and Crusader suffered more from disease and hardship when traveling in the Orient than they did at home, because they were not acclimatized to Levantine conditions of life and did not understand what was necessary for the preservation of health; and this may well have produced the unfavorable impression of the East which found its way in exaggerated form into the pages of the Topographia Hiberniae.
MOUNTAINS
Mountains are the most imposing natural features of the lands.[969] Though there did not exist in the Middle Ages anything comparable to that love of mountains for their own sake which developed later and of which we see an early manifestation in the ascent of Mont Ventoux by Petrarch in April, 1336, the very bulk of the hills, nevertheless, impressed men’s imaginations, and medieval literature is full of notices concerning mountains.
ORIGIN OF MOUNTAINS
In regard to their origin, Peter Comestor asserts that the mountains may not have been as high at the time of the Flood as they now are,[970] and Gervase of Tilbury cites the opinion of some that there were no mountains at all on the face of the earth before the Deluge.[971] Bartholomew Anglicus[972] conjectured that in the very beginning the earth was a plain covered with waters, the movements of which produced the valleys, while the heights were the ridges that remained separating the valleys; many mountains also were the result of great telluric convulsions and were full of caverns that give forth immense volumes of water and form the sources of rivers.
In a translation by Alfred of Sareshel of an Arabic work,[973] perhaps that of Avicenna, we have a strikingly modern description of the geological processes resulting in the production of mountains by the forces of erosion and by the accumulation of soil and earth. “Mountains may arise from two causes, either from uplifting of the ground, such as takes place in earthquakes or from the effects of running water and wind in hollowing out valleys in soft rocks and leaving the hard rocks prominent, which has been the effective process in the case of most hills. Such changes must have taken long periods of time, and possibly the mountains are now diminishing in size. What proves that water has been the main agent in bringing about these transformations of the surface is the occurrence in many rocks of the impressions of aquatic and other animals. The yellow earth that clothes the surface of the mountains is not of the same origin as the framework of the ground underneath it but arises from the decay of organic remains, mingled with earthy materials transported by the water. Perhaps these materials were originally in the sea which once overspread all the land” (Geikie’s translation).[974]
If, in reading the above passage, we feel that we are dealing with ideas that could well stand in the light of modern science and that in this passage at least geomorphology has emerged from its infancy, we are brought back to the Middle Ages when we turn to Rupert of Deutz’s teleological explanation of the reasons why God created deep valleys and high mountains on the land. According to this mystic, these features were made to serve as a protection to the human wanderer upon the surface of the earth from the violence of the winds which would otherwise have unlimited power over all things, as they do on the Libyan desert or on the ocean.[975]
THEIR SIZE AND HEIGHT
The fact that, great as mountains may appear to men, they are in reality but insignificant in comparison with the size of the entire earth, was partially appreciated by the author of the De imagine mundi, when he remarked[976] that, if we could look down on the earth from the air above, the entire height of the mountains and depth of the valleys would seem less than the width of the fingers of one who holds a very large ball in his hand.
We find occasional speculations regarding altitudes. Peter Comestor, followed by Gervase of Tilbury, asserted[977] that Olympus reaches up into a region of calm, windless air; and William of Conches held[978] that the presence of snow on mountains is due to the rarity of the air at high altitudes. Gervase stated,[979] on the authority of Posthumianus in the Dialogue of Sulpicius Severus[980] (a historian of the fourth century of our era), that Sinai is so lofty that its peak is very near the heavens and that consequently it is impossible to go there.[981]
Miraculous Mountains
Mountains and hills might have miraculous qualities. Giraldus Cambrensis told[982] of heights in Mona and in the northern part of Britain, beyond the Humber, over the crests of which no shouts could be heard; and Gervase of Tilbury described[983] Mount Cavagum (Canigou) in Catalonia, with a miraculous lake, the dwelling place of devils, on its summit; on one peak there lies perpetual snow and ice in a spot where the sun never shines, and a river of golden sand flows from its base. In the Romance of Alexander, the conqueror was said to have passed near a mountain which made brave men cowards and cowards brave.[984] On another occasion,[985] Alexander and his army became lost in a perilous valley among wild peaks; they could not find their way out unless one man sacrificed himself for the others by remaining in the valley. Alexander himself volunteered to remain, and the army escaped in the midst of fearful tempests; but subsequently Alexander was conducted out by a devil whom he found in the place and to whom he did a good turn.
ACCURATE OBSERVATION OF OROGRAPHIC PHENOMENA
On the other hand, during our period there was not a little reasonably accurate observation of the phenomena of mountains. Bernard Sylvester, for example, pointed out that mountains are bad plowland largely because of the thinness of the soil on their steep slopes.[986] Gervase of Tilbury noted that many of the high hills of Wales, though they might have firm and rocky bases, were characterized by watery and boggy summits.[987] Giraldus Cambrensis pictures the characteristics of the Welsh hills and brings out their combination of crag and pasture land. In one passage he tells of Mount Ereri—called by the English “Snowdon,” or mount of snows—which has such an extent of pasture lands upon it that it could supply the flocks of the whole of Wales.[988] The land of Meiryonidd (Merioneth) he spoke of as a wild, rough region, with mountains so broken and irregular that it frequently took all day for the shepherds to gather together in one spot,[989] even though they might have been within earshot of one another in the morning.
APPRECIATION OF THE BEAUTY OF MOUNTAINS
It is not hard to believe that during our period some men had the beginnings of a genuinely esthetic appreciation of the beauty of mountains. Bernard Sylvester tells of the orographic systems of the world in terms not lacking in color and poetic appreciation.[990] He writes that the world is strung with mountains like nerves in a body and goes on to enumerate and describe them: “Clear Olympus, which looks down on the clouds; Parnassus, with double yoke; Lebanon, in its woods;” Sinai, Athos, Eryx, Pindus, Othrys, Pelion, Caucasus. Though he merely repeats classical names and classical designations, the whole long passage could hardly have been written by a man wholly blind to the grandeur of his subject. Giraldus Cambrensis tells about the Church of St. David, now known as Llanthoni Abbey, in the midst of the hills of southern Wales. “Here the monks, when they sit down in their cloister to rest and take the air, see in all directions over the high gables of their roofs the peaks of the mountains bounding their horizon and, as it were, touching the sky. They see the wild deer pasturing on their summits, and at about the hour of the prime or shortly before in clear weather they see the sun appearing over the mountain crests.”[991] This certainly shows that the writer found delight in the restful qualities of a highland landscape.
If Walter of Châtillon had not at some time in his life felt the elation of a view at dawn from a mountain summit, he could hardly have written the brilliant description in the Alexandreis where he tells how Alexander, at the moment when the sun began to gleam upon the surface of the sea, rushed forth from his camp and climbed upon a steep peak whence his vision embraced the bounds of Asia. Looking out over fields green with crops, over many a forested mountain and meadow lavish in its rank grass, over many a city with its encircling walls and many a vineyard and elm tree entwined with vines, the conqueror exclaimed: “Enough! my friends: this land alone satisfies me. To you I leave Europe and your native country.”[992]
RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE TOWARDS MOUNTAINS
Ganzenmüller in his book on the feeling for nature in the Middle Ages cites several important texts which illustrate the religious attitudes towards mountains that must have prevailed throughout our period. We shall see a little later that Bernard of Clairvaux in one of his letters spoke of mountains as symbolizing the aspirations of the haughty and worldly.[993] But others believed that there is a godly quality about the heights. The biographer of bishop Altmann of Passau, writing in the twelfth century, tells us that one day the bishop, accompanied by an immense crowd of people, climbed a mountain near Mautern in Lower Austria firmly believing that those who serve God here below will climb to the corners and bounds of heaven.[994] Eadmer records of Anselm of Canterbury that on one occasion, when the latter happened to find himself on a high summit, he was so refreshed by the clear air and solitude that he remarked: “Here is my resting place: here will I dwell.”[995] St. Francis of Assisi must have felt the same mystic love of mountains that he felt for birds and animals and that he expressed so beautifully in his hymn to Brother Sun, for did he not in 1224 go into retreat at La Verna, a remote, forest-covered peak in the Casentino,[996] and did he not, as he left, turn back and bless the mountain as he had blessed the birds? At the present time the lower slopes of La Verna are bare and sun-baked. The summit, buttressed by massive ledges, is covered with a beautiful wood, and from it the eye wanders over Tuscany, across the ranges of the Apennines, and to the eastward catches a glimpse of the Adriatic. That St. Francis should deliberately have chosen this place of exceptional charm for a retreat; that he should have made a long, hard journey to reach it; and, above all, that here he received the supreme glory of his life reveal to us something far deeper than mere esthetic satisfaction in the beauty of nature. To St. Francis the quiet summit of the mountain was a symbol of the peace and tranquillity of heaven and of eternity.
NORMAL MEDIEVAL FEELING ABOUT MOUNTAINS
But for the most part mountainous regions were regarded as places of grimness and horror. The many journeys over the Alps made in the Middle Ages by pilgrim, soldier, and trader brought forth few comments on aught else than the hardships of the way. Otto of Freising tells[997] how in September, 1155, Frederick Barbarossa’s army passed through a narrow gorge in the Alps above Verona where robbers impeded its passage. Otto’s description is very brief and simple; the road, he says, runs between high cliffs on one side and the unfordable river on the other. Gunther in the Ligurinus[998] elaborates on this by the copious addition of words emphasizing the terrors of the route: the narrow track wide enough for only one person at a time to proceed; on one side the “cloud-swept crags of the jagged Alps,” on the other a chaotic, whirling stream; these combined to fill the passer-by with fear.
Perhaps the most striking narrative of a mountain passage dating from our period tells of the crossing of the Great St. Bernard Pass by the abbot of St. Trond and the archdeacon of Liége in 1128.[999] Having celebrated Christmas at Piacenza, the travelers arrived at the beginning of winter in the village of Restopolis (Étrouble) in the valley leading to the pass, Mons Jovis; here they were snowbound until after New Year’s Day. Finally the native guides were able to conduct them on to St. Rhémy farther up the valley close to the final ascent. “Frozen as it were in the jaws of death” they remained here a day and a night, constantly menaced by the gravest danger. The small village was full of travelers, many of whom had been overwhelmed by the avalanches which kept falling from the high cliffs on either side. Some of these unfortunates had been suffocated, and others so badly hurt that they were disabled.[1000] The ecclesiastics were obliged to spend several miserable days in this “accursed spot,” but at last they were able to prevail on their guides to lead them onward. A procession was organized, the guides in the lead, clad in thick felt hats, gloves, and with spikes in their boots to enable them to cross the ice; then came other storm-bound travelers; the horses and the clergy, who were physically the weakest, brought up the rear. Just before leaving, the party stopped for mass in a chapel. While the service was going on, ten of the guides who had gone ahead were engulfed by an avalanche and killed. This so alarmed the prelates that they retreated to Restopolis; but at last good weather came, and on January 6 they managed to get across the pass with no great difficulty.
In 1188 John of Bremble, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, visited the Great St. Bernard Pass. He wrote about it as follows to his sub-prior, Geoffrey, and gave expression to what Gribble correctly calls the “normal medieval view of mountains:”[1001] “I have been on the Mount of Jove; on the one hand looking up to the heaven of mountains, on the other shuddering at the hell of the valleys, feeling myself so much nearer heaven that I was sure that my prayer would be heard. ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘restore me to my brethren, that I may tell them that they come not to this place of torment.’ Place of torment, indeed, where the marble pavement of the stony ground is ice alone, and you cannot set your foot safely; where, strange to say, although it is so slippery that you cannot stand, the death into which there is every facility for a fall is certain death” (Gribble’s translation).
GLACIERS
As a general rule the medieval traveler took no interest in glaciers. Journeys across the Alps were such hazardous undertakings that even the traveler of scientific tastes could have had little opportunity or inclination to investigate the phenomena of the ice. A passage in the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, therefore, is doubly remarkable because it gives us some specific details regarding the glaciers of Iceland. After speaking of the ice floes breaking on the shore, Saxo writes: “There is also there another type of ice which runs between the rocks and passes of the mountains. This undergoes certain changes: it is subject to a process of transposition in which the upper parts sink down to the bottom and the lower parts arise to the surface. It is reliably asserted that persons who happened to be passing over the flat surface of the ice have fallen into crevasses and gaping fissures and that, soon after, their dead bodies have been recovered without a trace of ice above them. This circumstance has led many people to believe that whomsoever the icy caldron takes into its lowest depths, it will deliver again shortly after upside down.”[1002] Though this passage shows that Saxo did not have a clear conception of what he was trying to describe, it was certainly based upon some knowledge, though slight, of glacial phenomena. It is a well-known fact that on its arrival at the lower portion of a glacier, ice that at higher elevations was at the bottom often comes to the surface and brings with it materials scraped from the glacial bed or objects that may have fallen into the crevasses. This passage of Saxo has been cited as the earliest occasion in literature in which the motion of glacial ice was recognized.[1003]
VOLCANOES AND EARTHQUAKES
VISITS TO VOLCANOES
Volcanoes are a type of mountain that attracted particular attention, and, though the men of medieval and ancient times were certainly not mountain climbers,[1004] there are a few records of their having deliberately visited volcanoes out of curiosity or scientific interest. It is well known that Pliny the Elder perished in an attempt to investigate the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A. D., and during the twelfth century the Sicilian scholar and administrator, Henricus Aristippus, is said to have made a careful study of the volcanic phenomena of Etna, not without danger.[1005] In the legend of St. Brandan’s voyage we find an account of the manner in which a companion of the saint lost his life in an attempt to scale a fiery peak on an island in the northern seas.[1006]
The writer of the second verse redaction of the Image du monde also tells us that he himself had made the ascent of Mongibel (Etna), and his observations are so detailed and realistic that we cannot but believe that he is telling the truth.[1007] His object was to see what comes out of the smoking mouth of the mountain. He noticed that the fire which issues forth soon turns to vapor and smoke; that the rocks of the mountain resemble “foam of iron” (escume de fer—pumice or some other volcanic ejecta); that the land about the mountain is broken (esparse) and appears to be blasted and burned (bruslée et arse). The volcanic heat touched (ting) his bare hand, and a gentle sweat broke out over his body; but near the summit he was able to slake his thirst from frozen snow. On the way down he had the curious experience of hearing thunder in the clouds below him. When he finally got back to the city, the people thought he was a fool (musard) for venturing into a place with such a bad reputation. He adds that some people say that Mongibel is the highest mountain in the world. That it is much higher than appears from below, he himself had demonstrated. It can be seen from no less than two hundred leagues away at sea.
VOLCANIC REGION OF SOUTHERN ITALY AND SICILY
The two volcanic regions known to the medieval world were Southern Italy and Sicily on the one hand and Iceland on the other. Gervase of Tilbury describes Vesuvius and the volcanic features about Naples;[1008] he says that in the vicinity of Pozzuoli there are hills with sands near the summit so hot that they hinder persons from ascending across them. On the very outskirts of Naples he speaks of a high mountain, called Mons Virginum, overlooking the sea and the surrounding country. In the month of May it belches forth a terrifying smoke with firebrands that turn to the color of carbon when burnt out. This would seem to indicate the presence of a vent connecting the mountain with the infernal regions. (“Unde illic quoddam inferni terreni spiraculum asserunt ebullire.”) The south wind blows a hot dust from the volcano which ruins the crops and fruits of the neighborhood and tends to render the land barren and sterile. To this fairly clear description of a volcano Gervase adds a fantastic tale about the preventive measures which Virgil[1009] took to avert the disaster caused by the hot winds; the poet erected a statue holding a horn which automatically tooted whenever the south wind began to blow, and for some reason repulsed the blast.[1010] Recently, however, the statue had either gone to pieces with age or else had been destroyed by malice, for the damage done by the volcanic blasts was once more repeated as in bygone days.
The traveler Conrad of Querfurt looked with interest upon the volcanic features of the Phlegraean Fields to the northwest of Naples and drew attention to the confused labyrinth of passages in the interior of Monte Barbaro and to the hot springs, subterranean channels of boiling water, and other wonders of the region.[1011]
Guy of Bazoches, who passed through Sicily on the way to the Holy Land, included in a letter to his nephews a striking word picture of Etna. “Sicily,” he wrote, “fears not to pierce the clouds with its immense mountain summits. Etna towers above all of these with its flaming crests upon which the opposing elements strive with each other tirelessly and indomitably in an immense conflict. For though Etna incessantly sends forth scorching heat, its summit, none the less, is white with snow, and with a wintry garment it covers its burning shoulders.”[1012] Guy mentioned also the “Isles of Vulcan” in the Sicilian Sea, “the interior of which were said to glow with eternal fires. Eolus once dwelt in these isles and was in the habit of dispensing their smokes, which were stirred up by the winds, and hence he came to be called the king of the winds.”[1013] The Image du monde refers to a volcano two leagues distant at sea from Sicily; this may have been Vulcano or possibly Stromboli, though in any case the distance was underestimated.[1014]
Michael Scot on the Eolian Isles and Etna
Michael Scot brought together information about the volcanoes of the Eolian (Lipari) Islands and of Sicily which he included in a discourse on natural phenomena that he prepared for his patron Frederick II.[1015] He speaks of “Strongulus” (Stromboli), “a mountain which is in the midst of the sea,” of “Strongulinus” (Strombolicchio), “Vulcanus” (Vulcano), “Vulcaninus” (Vulcanello?), “Moncibellus” (Etna), and the isle of Lipari, “on which there are all manner of fine trees and grains.” From the summit of Stromboli and “Strongulinus,” a lesser mountain than Stromboli, great fiery flames are continuously emitted. The other four, he declares, emit flames only when the south wind (Auster) blows; and, when the flames cease, a mighty smoke issues from them. The eruptions are often accompanied by showers of scorched rock and sometimes with roots of trees (? sticiones lignorum) and cinders; the ground is covered and the air obscured as stream waters are clouded with sand. Glowing bombs are hurled aloft like sparks from a furnace; when these fall to the ground they burst into fragments, great and small, and in these fragments is found the pumice which writers use. This pumice floats on the sea and is carried ashore, where the people collect it for building walls and for uses similar to those to which we put bricks. Liquid sulphur is also gathered by sailors from the surface of the sea thereabouts in baskets and bowls. The nearer this may be obtained to the mountains whence it boils forth, the better its quality.
VOLCANOES OF ICELAND
In the Topographia Hiberniae of Giraldus Cambrensis we find a description of the volcanic eruptions of Iceland.[1016] After remarking that thunder and lightning are rare in the northern isle, he goes on to explain that there is another and even worse affliction than these; every year or two fire bursts out of a certain part of the island like a whirlwind with a violent gale and melts everything in its path; he adds that the cause of this phenomenon and whether it originated above or below ground are unknown. Into two manuscripts of Solinus, the oldest of which dates from the twelfth century, there was inserted some additional information about the northern isles. We are told that the marine ice on the coasts of Iceland “ignites itself on collision, and when it is ignited it burns like wood” (Nansen’s translation).[1017] Adam of Bremen had also spoken of ice that appeared to be black and dry on account of its age and burned when kindled.[1018] Though it has been suggested that this impression may have been derived from mists arising from the ice, the story was perhaps, as Nansen observes, “due to statements about volcanoes and boiling springs which have been confused with it. The black color and dryness of the ice may have been due to confusion with lava or with floating pumice stone in the sea.”[1019]
More definite information concerning the volcanic activity of Iceland reached Saxo Grammaticus about a century after the time of Adam of Bremen. Saxo refers to a mountain there which perpetually glows like a star with its burning flame, and it seemed to him no less marvelous that the eruption could occur in a region of such extreme cold.[1020] In the Historia Norwegiae the fiery outbreaks of Mons Casule (Hekla) are likened to those of Etna, and an immense submarine eruption is described; over a space three miles wide the sea had boiled and bubbled as in a caldron; the earth was upheaved and out of the submarine depths there arose fiery fumes, and a mighty mountain sprang from the sea.[1021] This perhaps refers to a submarine eruption that took place off Cape Reykyanes in 1211.[1022]
In the King’s Mirror the volcanic activity of Iceland is compared with that of Sicily, and the curious statement is made that, unlike the subterranean fires of the Mediterranean isle, those of Iceland will burn neither wood nor earth. On the other hand, they will burn the hardest stones and pieces of rock just as easily as oil.[1023]
ST. BRANDAN’S VISITS TO VOLCANIC ISLES
St. Brandan in the course of his wanderings came across two fiery islands.[1024] The first was eight days’ sail to the north of the mysterious crystal column we have already mentioned. It was a rough, treeless, and rocky isle covered with the forges of smiths. Though the saint wished to keep clear of this dangerous spot, a wind sprang up which drove his vessel towards it. One of the smiths threw a gigantic mass of molten slag at the voyagers; but luckily he missed the ship, and the slag fell into the sea, sending up huge clouds of steam. This was a signal for all the smiths to start heaving lumps of molten ore at the vessel, running back and forth from their forges to heat them. Soon the entire island was burning and blazing like a furnace, and the sea around boiling like a kettle. The saint and his party miraculously escaped from this peril, but throughout the entire day they could hear an immense din and shouting from the isle; and even when they had drifted out of sight the tumult came to their ears, and their nostrils were afflicted by a terrible stench. Soon the wanderers approached the second fiery isle; their first sight of it revealed a mighty mountain on the northern horizon, with its peak enveloped in what appeared to be a thin cloud but in reality was smoke. They landed on the shores of the island, and one of Brandan’s companions who endeavored to climb the steep, high crags and investigate the summit was burned to death by the fires. Happily for the others, a wind arose which drove the ship southward, whence they saw the island now clear of smoke and spouting flames into the air, so that the whole mountain appeared to be aglow.
It has been suggested that these stories were derived from classical and Celtic mythology. The first island brings to mind pagan tales mingled with Christian traditions of devils and the infernal regions; perhaps it owes something to the Homeric account of the isle of the Cyclops. But why, we may ask, did Irish writers place such fiery phenomena in the cold and rainy seas surrounding their home? Is it not possible that early Irish poets had heard vaguely of the volcanoes of Iceland and that nebulous reports of them, modified by the influence of classical and Christian traditions, took the form which we find in the legend of St. Brandan’s voyagings? May it not be significant that the fiery islands of St. Brandan were reached only after northerly wanderings?
VOLCANOES AS GATES OF HELL
Volcanoes were often popularly supposed to be the entrances into Hell or else little independent scenes of punishment and dwelling places of devils. Michael Scot would not decide “whether the gate to the lower regions is” in the volcanoes of the Lipari Islands and Sicily “or in the northern isle seen by St. Brandan....” But, he said, “whatever the way in, Hell is in the bowels of the earth, and there is no way out” (Haskins).[1025] St. Brandan, seven days’ journey to the south of the second island just described, found Judas sitting alone on a rock in the midst of the sea.[1026] In the course of their conversation, Judas explained that he was imprisoned every day excepting Sundays and Christmas in the mountain which they had seen erupting. On these days, through the infinite mercy of Jesus Christ, he was permitted to come out and cool off. The bishop of Pozzuoli, Gervase of Tilbury tells us,[1027] on several occasions heard the wailings and lamentations of the damned during his walks in the volcanic country near his city and had actually seen the gates of Hell in a lake near by. Icelandic mythology conceived of a gigantic hell under and inside of Mount Hekla.[1028] The King’s Mirror placed in the volcanic fires of Iceland a scene of punishment for souls.[1029] In addition it speaks of a cold hell, belief in which seems natural to Northern peoples and is also expressed in Saxo Grammaticus’ description of the moanings and wailings to be heard in the clashing of ice floes on the cliffs and crags of the Icelandic coast.[1030]
CAUSES OF VULCANISM
Medieval writers did not add much to what the Greeks and Romans had said in regard to the causes of vulcanism. In general they accepted the theories of Isidore and Pliny. Sicily, a typical volcanic region, was supposed to be cavernous and full of sulphur and bitumen strata which, when ignited and kept burning by the air, throw off smoke, vapor, and flames and, when a strong wind blows upon them, vomit forth masses of sand and rocks.[1031] Gervase of Tilbury elaborates confusedly on this theme,[1032] saying that there are many fires and earthquakes in Sicily because beneath that land there is a mighty abyss, the bottom of which is unknown to man. Near at hand are immense caverns and broad caves, wherein winds are conceived from the whirling of the waters, for mountains and waters create winds—mountains by offering an obstacle to the air. Though he does not say so specifically, we may conclude that Gervase believed that earthquakes and other volcanic phenomena were caused by these winds trying to escape from the interior of the earth. This was certainly the opinion of Michael Scot, who pointed out that masses of sulphur and other white-hot rocks (petre calidissime) are made to burn by the native heat of the earth’s interior and by the winds which enter the earth’s crust in remote regions (in extremis partibus) and force their way downward through passages, tubes, and caverns. These winds are volatilized and given explosive force by contact with the sulphur and hot rocks. When they burst forth again into the atmosphere they have all the attributes of fire and flame—sparks, ashes, cinders—and are supposed by many people to be genuine fire, though as a matter of fact they are by nature quite different because the waters ever present in the subterranean cavities fail to extinguish them. So intense is the heat produced by the sulphur and other combustible materials that the world would be entirely consumed by the winds that would blow over them if they were on the earth’s surface. Hence it is a great mercy of God that he has hidden them away in the depths of the ground and has thus made impossible the destruction of the world by this cause and that he has permitted men to dwell and cultivate their fields on the mountains beneath which such evil forces are buried.[1033]
Alexander Neckam defined a volcano as a subterranean fire which, though bound to the earth with one foot, seeks to spring aloft with the other. He believed that volcanic rocks contain gases within them which when kindled produce eruptions.[1034]
Though these passages reveal to us belief during the Crusading age in the presence of heat and fire in the inside of the earth, the teachings of Plato and many of the Church Fathers that the sources of volcanic fires spring from immense subterranean reservoirs of fire do not appear to have been given much credence. Though the earth’s crust and even its innermost heart might be interpenetrated with cavities into which air, water, and fire enter, confidence in the essential solidity and massiveness of the earth prevailed, and theories which would admit of the presence of bodies of water or of fire of any great extent within the heaviest and most solid of the elements were not regarded as worthy of serious consideration. Hell, however, was almost universally placed at the very center of the earth by medieval theologians and geographers alike.[1035]
EARTHQUAKES
The majority of medieval writers believed that earthquakes are caused by the same physical forces as those which produce volcanic eruptions, the violent stirring of winds,[1036] vapors, or exhalations within the earth’s crust.[1037] In the Quaestiones naturales of Adelard of Bath, which takes the form of a dialogue between uncle and nephew, the nephew finds it difficult to reconcile the stability and immobility of the earth, which his uncle had just demonstrated, with the well-known fact that the earth sometimes quakes and trembles. To this Adelard replies that, while it is true that the earth may occasionally move in particular localities, it does not move as a whole[1038] and that earthquakes are caused by the air contained within the earth and have nothing whatever to do with the intrinsically stable qualities of the earth as a globe. He then proceeds to give the Aristotelian explanation of the causes of earthquakes.[1039] The De imagine mundi, followed by the Image du monde and by Bartholomew Anglicus,[1040] also assigns the same causes; and William of Conches explains[1041] that earthquakes are the result of waters descending into underground hollows where they encounter vapors, condensed into cloudlike form by the coldness of the earth’s interior; these vapors, in turn, produce telluric movements by forcing their way to the surface. Neckam repeats much the same explanation but adds the usual allegorical lesson:[1042] the land symbolizes the Church, which, although on the whole serene and firm, may well be shaken now and then by purely local troubles and disturbances.
The medieval chronicler took delight in mentioning prodigies of nature that came to his attention, and of these prodigies earthquakes were among the most striking. The Gesta regis Henrici Secundi, under the year 1178, records a terrific earthquake at Oxenhale in England:[1043] some land owned by Hugh, bishop of Durham, rose up like a tower, so that its highest point was on a level with the summits of the hills and higher than the highest pinnacle of the churches (templorum); after remaining like this from nine o’clock until nightfall, it collapsed at sunset with a terrific noise that frightened all the onlookers. The earth then absorbed the tower of land and in its place there remained until the time of writing a well of immense depth as a perpetual testimony to the occurrence of this phenomenon. In the same chronicle, under the date of April 15, 1185,[1044] we find a more typical and less fantastic description of an earthquake felt throughout almost the entire length of England; rocks were shattered, stone houses fell in ruins, and the metropolitan church of Lincoln was broken asunder from top to bottom.
DESERTS
The deserts of the Orient impressed the medieval writer in much the same way as mountains, by the obstacles and difficulties which they presented to the traveler. William of Tyre dilates[1045] on the terrors of drought in the desert and explains how the Saracens carry in great sacks on camels water sufficient to serve man and beast for many days at a time; he pictures impressively the horrors of the sand storms that may spring up at any time. In the Egyptian desert, he says, the land is so dry and barren that no manner of tree can grow there. The features of the desert are also described in the Letter of Prester John.[1046] This fabulous Christian potentate of the East tells us that in the great Sandy Sea which lies in his country the sands are disturbed by the wind and form endlessly moving waves like the waves of the real sea. But the analogy with the sea is carried a trifle too far when he goes on to assert that fish are found in the Sandy Sea. He adds that from certain mountains, three days’ journey away, a river of stones flows down and, running three days a week, sweeps both rocks and logs into the Sandy Sea, but they disappear in the sands and are never seen again. If we remove the halo of fable surrounding all this, we discern here an account of a desert of dunes, with dry watercourses entering it, a feature common enough in southwestern Asia and northern Africa. On the whole, however, little was known of deserts in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, and, though the waste places of Asia and India are constantly mentioned in the Romance of Alexander, the descriptions of them are wholly fanciful.
ISLANDS
ORIGINS
The men of the West at this time were familiar with many islands. Giraldus Cambrensis takes up the problem of the origin of the islands of the earth and in particular the question of whether they were formed at the time of the Deluge or long before or long after.[1047] His opinion seems to have been that some time after the Flood the lands became replete with animal life and that it was then that the islands came into existence, not violently and suddenly but little by little out of alluvial deposits.[1048] In his emphasis on the gradual and non-catastrophic manner of their formation, Giraldus by hazard enunciates a sound geological doctrine which contrasts favorably with the theories he elsewhere expresses about the violent and sudden appearance of lakes.
MIRACULOUS ISLANDS
Like mountains and lakes, islands were convenient topographic units to which the medieval mind was wont to attribute fabulous and supernatural qualities. Gervase of Tilbury, for example, describes a certain isle in the sea off the coast of the Kingdom of Arles—Lirniensis, perhaps the Isle de Lérins—where no worms ever are found.[1049] He was unable to decide whether this was due to the extreme holiness of a colony of monks which once dwelt on the island or to some natural peculiarity of the soil. At all events, this reminds us of the tradition about the inability of poisonous reptiles or noxious animals of any kind to exist in Ireland.
Giraldus Cambrensis speaks of a floating island in a lake on the summit of Mount Snowdon.[1050] This was said to be blown about by the winds, and shepherds were much startled now and then to see their cattle transported on it from one side of the lake to the other. Giraldus explains this reasonably enough as follows: a portion of the shore had become bound together and made firm and solid as if by ropes formed from the roots of the willow and other plants. After being gradually increased in size by the addition of alluvium it finally broke off. The violent winds prevalent in the vicinity then drove it back and forth over the surface of the lake. This story undoubtedly had a basis of truth, for it is well known that sod floats about on the surface of one of the lakes near Snowdon, but that it could carry cattle upon it is a decided exaggeration.
ISLANDS OF ST. BRANDAN
The most marvelous of the islands mentioned in medieval legend were those which St. Brandan visited.[1051] The first one he came to, a high and rocky crag rising abruptly out of the sea, was doubtless suggested to the mind of the poet by one of the forbidding islets in the seas off the western coast of Ireland. Thence the saint and his crew voyaged in turn to an island entirely covered with sheep, to one that proved to be the back of a gigantic fish called Jasconius, to one full of miraculous birds that could speak, to one that put them in mind of Paradise, to a rocky isle full of forges and smiths, to an isle where there dwelt a certain hermit, Paul, who had lived there forty years without food but for thirty years had been fed by a certain beast;[1052] and finally the saint himself attained the island which was the goal of all his wanderings, the Saints’ Land of Promise (Terra repromissionis sanctorum), or Paradise—a reminiscence perhaps of the Hesperides, or Happy Islands, of Greek mythology.
Giraldus describes an isle off the Irish coast which would seem to be akin to Brandan’s Jasconius.[1053] Doubts were raised as to whether this peculiar island was a whale or some other monster or whether it was really land; for some youths had tried to disembark upon it, but, just as they were about to set foot ashore, it disappeared beneath the waves. The next day it reappeared and the same thing was repeated. Finally, on the third day, one of the young men shot a red-hot arrow into it; this seems to have stabilized it, for the island did not disappear again and ultimately proved to be habitable. From this Giraldus argued that as fire is the most noble of the elements no phantasm can withstand its power.
INFLUENCES OF GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT
ON PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE
In the writings of the Crusading age we find a few scattered remarks on the relationship between geographical features and environment and the life of man and animals, or on those branches of our science now called biogeography and anthropogeography. The writings of Bernard Sylvester furnish us with some striking examples. The Platonic and realist conception of the unity of all matter, which was exemplified in the theory of a World Soul and expounded in vivid terms by Theodoric of Chartres, led Bernard in his De mundi universitate to emphasize the close interrelations of all natural phenomena and the influences of the various elements and parts of the universe upon each other. He stressed, for example, the importance of astrological influences, by attributing to the moon control over the tides and other terrestrial phenomena.[1054] In geography he emphasized the influences of terrain on plant and animal life. Thus he says “fruitful land gives birth to wolves, desert to lions, arid land to serpents, woods to bees.”[1055] Elsewhere he explains how the plane tree grows in flat country, the alder in valleys, the box among rocks, the willow on the banks of streams, the fragrant cypress in the mountains, the sacred vine on the slopes, and the olive in well-worked loam.[1056] Neckam also recognized that the growth of plants was governed by the qualities of the earth.[1057] Only about the center of the globe is there really true earth; the surface which we cultivate is not true earth because it is intermingled with particles of air, fire, and other substances. Consequently it follows that in the same territory there may grow herbs by nature both warm and cold and that in certain places oats thrive well and in others barley.
There is a very striking passage in Hildegard’s Subtilitates explaining in much detail the influence of various kinds of soil upon agriculture.[1058] Hildegard asserts that there are divers types of soil (terra)—black, white, and red. White soil is pallid and sandy and contains much humidity in the form of large raindrops: because of this quality white soil produces great vines and apple orchards but is rather less well adapted for the raising of grains. The latter may better be cultivated upon soil characterized by humidity of finer texture and minuter drops. Black soil contains too much cold and dampness to produce more than a moderate yield; red soil, on the other hand, has the right balance of dampness and dryness and hence produces a quantity of fruits, which, however, through their very abundance fail to attain perfection. And so Hildegard proceeds with a discussion that would have been of a highly utilitarian character, had it only been based more directly upon the observation of the facts of nature.
ON MAN
The influence of geographical environment on man is also noted by some of the writers of our period. Otto of Freising explains[1059] that the Lombards on entering Italy gave up their wild customs and adopted Italian ways, partly because they married native women but partly as a result of the nature of country and climate. Giraldus tells how the plains of southern Wales are far more pleasant to live in than those of the north.[1060] The latter region, on the other hand, has not only better natural defenses but a richer soil and is more fertile in producing men of strength and power. Gunther in the Ligurinus[1061] enlarged on Ragewin’s simple description (in his continuation of Otto of Freising’s Gesta Friderici) of the wild ferocity of the natives of Poland by saying that their fierceness and savagery is due partly to the nature of the soil and partly to the influence of their neighbors.
Topography As a Natural Defense
In the same connection these authors try to show that topography may often serve as a natural defense against hostile invaders. Giraldus speaks of Wales[1062] as a country easily defensible because of the depth of its valleys and the immensity of its woods, waters, and swamps. The remnants of the ancient Britons who were driven here were able to hold out and preserve their independence against both Angles and Normans. On the other hand, those who were driven into the southern promontory (Cornwall), where the land was not by nature so easy to defend, yielded to the conqueror. In another connection[1063] Giraldus speaks of the difficulties any one would encounter in trying to conquer such a rough country as Wales and one so well fortified by nature. Gervase of Tilbury also testifies to the strong natural defenses of Wales,[1064] specifying how the Welsh, when enemies appear, take to the bog lands on the mountains, which they can easily cross through an agility resulting from long familiarity. Here they either escape from their enemies or lie in wait to inflict grave harm on them. Giraldus[1065] tells that the islands in the lakes of Ireland were used for refuges as well as for dwelling places by the lords of the surrounding districts; and Ragewin[1066] speaks of the natural defenses of Genoa, hemmed in on one side by mountains and on the other by the sea.
Theory of the Westward Flow of Civilization
We may close this account of the relations of man with his geographical environment with a few words about a strangely fatalistic theory which prevailed among certain thinkers and in particular among the mystics. It was a theory that civilization flows from the East to the West and that when it reaches the uttermost limits of the West the human race will meet its doom and extinction. Severian of Gabala had said in the fourth century:[1067] “God looked into the future and set the first man in that place [Paradise, in the East] in order to cause him to understand that, just as the light of heaven moves toward the west, so the human race hastens towards death; but that it is just as reasonable to expect a future resurrection from death as it is to expect that the stars will again rise in the east.” This idea appears in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor, who states in the De arca Noë morali[1068] that the order of places and the order of time run in series; that whatever happened in the beginning of time happened in the Orient and that henceforth the course of events has gradually been moving westward, until now it has reached the end of the earth and we must face the fact that we are approaching the end of the ages (saeculi). Shortly after the Deluge the most important kingdoms and the capitol of the world were in the East, in the lands of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Medes; then the supreme power passed to the Greeks; and finally, towards the end of the ages, to the Romans who dwell on the confines of the world. In the De arca Noë mystica the front of the ark is said to face the east and the rear the west “in order that the position of places shall correspond with the order of time and the end of the world shall be at the end of the centuries.”[1069] The ark is here supposed to represent a map of the world, and the segment of the circle of the orbis terrarum cut by the ark and facing the east is the location of Paradise; the segment facing the west will be the place of universal resurrection. Ideas very similar to this are also found in the De vanitate mundi of Hugh of St. Victor.[1070]
Though it cannot be proved that Otto of Freising made use of these works, nevertheless his philosophy of history is to a large extent based on the theory of the westward flow of civilization.[1071] In the prologue to his Chronicon he queries, “Who can wonder that human power is changeable, when mortal wisdom also is unstable (labilis)? What great learning there was in Egypt and among the Chaldeans, from whom Abraham derived his knowledge! But what now is Babylon, once famous for its science and its power? A shrine of sirens, a home of lizards and ostriches, a den of serpents! And Egypt is now in large part a trackless and uninhabitable waste, whence science was transferred to the Greeks, then to the Romans, and finally to the Gauls and Spaniards. And,” he concludes, “let it be observed that because all human power or wisdom began in the Orient and will end in the Occident, the mutability and disappearance of all things is demonstrated. This I propose, with God’s aid, to make clear in the work which follows.” Otto again hammers on this theme in the prologue of his fifth book[1072] and finally, near the close of the same book,[1073] remarks, “For behold, as I have explained above, just as the heavens turn from east to west, so we behold worldly affairs and powers revolving.” If human power is so changeable, he asks, who can expect that the Kingdom of the Franks will last very long?
The idea that “westward the course of empire takes its way” was thus raised in the Middle Ages to a position of theological doctrine and philosophical principle.
FEELING FOR LANDSCAPE AND SCENERY
The pagan, or classical, attitude toward nature was characterized by a subjective and esthetic enjoyment of beautiful scenery; the Christian saw in nature the symbol and manifestation of the divinity.[1074] Both points of view were represented in the literature of our age.
SPIRITUAL FEELING FOR NATURE
The more spiritual feeling found its expression in the writings of men like Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, Francis of Assisi, Alexander Neckam, and many others.[1075] Bernard of Clairvaux believed that a man could learn more of the eternal verities through a reverent contemplation of nature than through the study of books. He wrote to Master Henry Murdach, an Englishman who afterwards became a monk of Clairvaux: “Believe one who has tried: you shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in books. The trees and the rocks will teach you that which you cannot hear from the masters. Do you think that you cannot draw honey from the rock and oil from the hardest flint? Do not our mountains drop sweetness? the hills flow with milk and honey? and the valleys stand thick with corn?” (Eales’s translation).[1076] Bernard was fond of complex and detailed allegorical comparisons of the aspects of nature with the theological or spiritual concepts which he believed they symbolize. In a sermon on Benedict he said: “St. Benedict was a mighty fruit tree, like a tree planted by a watercourse. Where are the watercourses? Truly they are in the valleys, because midway between the mountains the water flows down. Who may not perceive that the streams retreat from the steep slopes of the mountains and make their way straight to the lowly midst of the valleys? Thus does God repulse the haughty and give grace to the humble. Here you may set foot in safety. Whoever of you are of the flock of Christ, place your trust in his staff and follow the footpath in the valley. On the hillsides that ancient serpent has ever chosen his abode which bites the horse’s hoof and makes the rider fall back. Select rather the valley for your wanderings and plantings. Do not seek the dry and rocky mountain side to set out trees. In the valleys is abundance. There plants thrive, the grass is lush, fruits grow, and, according to the words of Scripture, ‘the vales shall abound with corn.’”[1077]
It was in much the same vein that Bernard spoke of the sea as the origin of all springs and rivers and compared it with Christ, the fount of all virtue and wisdom.[1078] It was a wish to find an allegorical meaning in the phenomena of nature that induced Abelard to compare the flood of the Nile with the spread of Christian grace throughout the world.[1079] These and the many other similar allegorical comparisons that are so frequent in the literature of our period are not mere juxtapositions of things that were seen to be alike. Bernard did more than liken the valley to the humble of spirit. He implied that the valley itself partook of the quality of humility and was thereby in some way more divine than the mountain. But, if Bernard believed that mountains were symbolical of pride and arrogance, others, like Altmann of Passau, Anselm of Canterbury, and Francis of Assisi, were lovers of mountains in a truly spiritual sense. To the twelfth-century mystic the beauty of nature was more than a symbol of the divinity: it drew its very essence from God. The love that St. Francis bore towards birds and animals, mountains and fellow man was a love that arose out of his regarding all of these as creatures of God impregnated with something of the divine.
ESTHETIC LOVE OF NATURE
The esthetic love of nature that existed during our period was very different. It had its roots in a movement of protest and rebellion against the austerity of the Christian life and ideals. Men wished to enjoy the things of this world without thought of the next. What is more, they sometimes actually dared to write about their pleasures. These early stirrings of the humanistic spirit, the spirit of the Great Renaissance, brought forth troubled protests and angry remonstrances from men like Bernard and other reformers; but none the less love poems were often composed in the monasteries, and vagrant poets wandered over Europe singing the praises of earthly love, rejoicing in the springtime, with little heed for aught but the beauty of the world. Popular wherever they went, these wanderers exerted a great influence, and something of their joyous, pagan spirit crept into more serious writings of the age.
It would be possible to quote at some length texts testifying to the presence of an esthetic feeling for nature in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.[1080] Two or three examples must here suffice.
One of the most enthusiastic observers of natural scenery was Guy of Bazoches. He describes the environs of the castle of St. Gilles in southern France about as follows:[1081] “Here smile cultivated and fertile fields, and here the sides of the hills are adorned with vineyards. The pleasing aspect of the shrubbery and the beauty of gardens meets the eye, and oh! how the sweet smell of the grass fills the air! Fruit trees groan under their load and lament their fertility, and the warbling birds in the branches send forth rich harmonies. If we look in a different direction we see the plain stretching out its level lap covered with green meadows and alluring us with its beauty. The Rhone, disdainfully cutting through the midst of the fields, rolls down proud waters and, reaching its place of birth, flows forth into the neighboring sea.”
Even more striking is a passage from a poem that has been ascribed to Marbod of Rennes. “My uncle owns an estate in the forest where I am in the habit of going to leave care behind and all that may trouble one. The green grass, the silent woods, the soft and festive breezes, and a lively spring in the meadow revive my tired spirit: they give me back to myself and enable me to regain my poise (me mihi reddunt et faciunt in me consistere). For who is not robbed of himself in the restless city, roaring with a multitude of noises?”[1082] The writer goes on to meditate in truly Roman fashion on the transitory character of all things of this earth. Ganzenmüller comments on the subjective character of these sentiments: “What a distance separates this from the attitude towards nature of a Bernard of Clairvaux! Bernard ascribes loneliness to God, our poet to himself. No longer did one seek in nature for God but for one’s own self.”[1083]
PRACTICAL INTEREST IN COUNTRYSIDES
On the whole, however, the passages just quoted are more or less exceptional. The majority of descriptions of countrysides that date from our period reveal neither highly developed esthetic feeling nor transcendental emotion. What they do reveal is the prevalence of keen intellectual interest in detail. If a region was in any way unusual either by reason of the richness of its produce or the marvelous tales that were in circulation about it, that region was held to be worthy of comment.
Dreesbach has clearly pointed out[1084] that the passages from the French literature of the Crusading period which describe the Orient show that the things which impressed themselves on the minds of historian and chronicler and poet were the richness of gardens and orchards and the fertility of the fields. Her fecundity, not her romantic or esthetic qualities, made the average man of the Middle Ages love nature; and a country not rich and prosperous hardly deserved any particular notice, in his way of thinking. The descriptions of Syria in William of Tyre’s history reveal a great number of observations like the following: “The plain of Antioch, full of many rich fields for the raising of wheat and abounding in springs and rivulets,”[1085] or the neighborhood of Damascus, “where there are a great number of trees bearing fruits of all kinds and growing up to the very walls of the city and where everybody has a garden of his own.”[1086] Elsewhere William of Tyre emphasizes the contrast between the sterility of the desert and the marvelous fertility of Egypt, with its abundance of wheat.[1087] The same interest in the economic qualities of the land appears in the few local descriptions that we find in the writings of Otto of Freising. Otto speaks[1088] of the forested region about the Rhine, near Worms, as being “rich in produce and wine, abundant in hunting and fishing,” and for this reason, he adds, the region was pleasing to the princes who came from across the Alps to take part in the Diet at Worms. In detailing the life of Corbianus, founder of the church at Freising, he gives us a topographical account of the vicinity of this city.[1089] A hill, he says, situated in a most beautiful and delicious spot, overlooks like a watchtower the whole region, through which can be seen the swift stream of the Isar. In the days of Corbianus (about 745 A. D.) this territory was said to have been covered with woods and was a haunt of game; traces of these woods were still to be found in the ancient tree trunks among the thickets of the plains, and to Otto’s own day immense quantities of deer and goats ran wild there. In the northern part of the district by no means inconsiderable tracts of woodland, commonly called “the forest,” were still in existence, and from them much useful building material and fuel could be procured. The land contiguous to the hill was inclosed by the rivers Isar on the south and Amper on the north, and between the two streams it extended four German miles in the form of a very fertile peninsula. At the end of this, where the two rivers come together, was a place called Moosburg, beautiful and delightful, the site of a congregation of clergy connected with the church of the blessed Castulus.
GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS’ EYE FOR LOCAL TOPOGRAPHY
Giraldus Cambrensis, more than his contemporaries, had an eye for local topography. In spite of his taste for the marvelous, this impelled him now and then to paint a fairly clear word picture of the appearance of the countryside. He notes many things of a sort that do not usually occur in other medieval works; for instance, the fact that in fair weather it is possible to see the hills of Ireland from St. David’s Head in Wales;[1090] that the fertility of the Irish soil lies in its grassland rather than in its grain;[1091] that Ireland is rugged and hilly, very damp and watery, full of woods, swamps, and trackless wastes, with lakes at the foot of the hills and pools and bogs even on the highest summits; that here and there one sees beautiful plains, but in general open surfaces are of limited extent in comparison to woodland; that the seacoasts are low, that hills and mountains are restricted to the interior, and that both inland and along the shores there is more sandy than rocky country.[1092] He was also impressed by the barren and desolate character of many parts of Wales;[1093] the “angle” of the land near St. David’s, he says, has a rocky, sterile soil, with neither woods, nor rivers, nor orchards, but is open and exposed to winds and storms. Mona also is arid and rocky, deformed in appearance, and generally unpromising, though as a matter of fact vastly more fertile and opulent than the adjacent portion of the Welsh mainland.[1094]
X. THE ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE KNOWN WORLD
We have already examined the broader theories of astronomical geography whereby the relation of the globe to the remainder of the universe was explained. In this chapter we shall speak only of those aspects of astronomical geography which were intimately connected with man’s knowledge of the various parts of the known world, or oikoumene, as distinguished from the sphere as a whole.
PHENOMENA RESULTING FROM DIFFERENCES IN LATITUDE
Within the oikoumene the phenomena resulting from varying elevations of the ecliptic in different latitudes were fairly well understood. The facts that there are two summers between the tropics (particularly in India) and that the sun there passes vertically overhead twice a year had been commented on by Pliny and Solinus, whose observations in this connection found their way into Isidore’s Etymologiae[1095] and thus to the works of the plagiarists of Isidore in our period. The De imagine mundi,[1096] the Image du monde,[1097] Gervase of Tilbury,[1098] and John of Holywood[1099] all tell us that the same phenomenon was said to occur in Arabia which lies between the tropics. Similarly the long days and nights of far northern latitudes were described on the authority of Solinus and Isidore. In the De imagine mundi,[1100] from which Gervase copies, it is said that in the island of “Chili” (Thule) there are six months of daylight and summer and six of night and winter. Giraldus Cambrensis also quotes Solinus[1101] and Isidore[1102] to the same effect and adds a brief description of how the sun continuously circles around the horizon during the long Arctic day and how its light disappears completely when the luminary departs southward towards the Tropic of Capricorn.[1103]
“CLIMATA”
The ancient geographers had divided the earth’s surface into climata, or climates, which, as we have already seen,[1104] were not atmospheric regions but mathematical strips running east and west and bounded by parallels of latitude. Pliny,[1105] for instance, had conceived of seven climates, the first in the latitude of India, where the length of the longest day is fourteen hours, and the seventh in that of the Borysthenes (Dnieper) and of Venetia, Umbria, Milan, and Aquitania, where the longest day is fifteen and three-quarters hours. Martianus Capella[1106] added an eighth climate in the north between the parallel of the Borysthenes and that of the Rhipaean Mountains. Furthermore, he applied names to the strips. It must be added, however, that neither Pliny nor Capella were precise in the data they gave, and neither indicated in degrees the latitude of the parallels which bound their climates.
More definite is the information we find in the two works of Ptolemy. The Almagest[1107] and Geography[1108] give accounts of the characteristic astronomical phenomena that occur along a series of parallels, thirty-eight in number according to the former, twenty-one according to the latter.[1109] The positions of these were determined by the length of the longest day at each one. Though there is no explicit mention of the older division by climates in the text of either of Ptolemy’s books, such a division not only appears upon the map of the world made by Agathodaemon on the basis of material supplied by Ptolemy but also upon certain of the special regional maps which were probably the work of Ptolemy himself.[1110]
At all events, the conception of the seven or eight climates did not disappear but at a very early period, whether by Ptolemy or not, was correlated with the Ptolemaic parallels.[1111] That is to say, certain of Ptolemy’s parallels were used to designate the imaginary lines marking the centers and bounds of the climates. This practice was adopted by the Arabs and from them transferred to the knowledge of the Christian West in various astronomical treatises. Among the Latin manuscripts of the Toledo Tables,[1112] for instance, there are series of astronomical tables for each of the seven climates, according to which the climates occupy the space between latitude 16° N., with a longest day of thirteen hours, and 48° N., with a longest day of sixteen hours. The length of the longest day and the latitude are given for each parallel that bounds the climates. Except that Ptolemy notes minutes as well as degrees and in the Toledo Tables the minutes have in most cases been omitted, the figures correspond essentially with those of the Almagest and Geography. Thus: Ptolemy’s eleventh parallel according to the Almagest (or tenth according to the Geography) has a longest day of fourteen and a half hours and is at latitude 36°. In the Tables the southern edge of the fourth climate likewise has a longest day of fourteen and a half hours and is at latitude 36°.
Again, in John of Seville’s translation of Al-Farghānī’s Astronomy[1113] and in the De sphaera[1114] of John of Holywood, who had borrowed from Al-Farghānī in this matter, we find a similar correlation. In both cases the figures of latitude correspond essentially, though with slight divergences in detail, to those of Ptolemy. The boundaries of each climate, however, have here been displaced by one parallel to the south of the parallels used in the Toledo Tables and those which we may presume were the Ptolemaic boundaries of the climates.[1115]
The table, Figure 11 (in the Notes to Ch. X), gives some idea of the relative degree of accuracy of these figures as they were employed in the West during the Middle Ages. But just as in the case of other figures for latitude and longitude, as we shall shortly have occasion to see, this material was not utilized for geographical purposes during our age.
GEOGRAPHICAL COÖRDINATES
At the present time the study of regional geography is largely dependent on a precise knowledge of the geographical coördinates of places. The foremost duty of the explorer is to know where he is from day to day and to find this out by astronomical means, if possible. In classical times and among the Moslems the importance of such observations was not only well understood, but several methods of carrying them through were described by astronomers and geographers, and the latitudes of a great many stations had been determined astronomically. Longitude, on the other hand, long remained a stumbling block, and before the twelfth century, certainly, no systematic attempts to ascertain the longitudes of any large number of places had ever met with success.
A few relics of classical and Moslem study in this field became familiar in the West as a result of the intense interest in Arabic astronomy prevailing in Europe between the tenth and thirteenth centuries.[1116]
Various figures representing the results of Arabic corrections of and additions to the data given in Ptolemy’s Geography found their way into Western astrological tables. The most interesting of these occur in a list of the latitudes and longitudes of some sixty odd cities appended to the Paris manuscript of the Marseilles Tables of Raymond of Marseilles[1117] and also to most of the Latin versions of the Toledo Tables.[1118] This list and certain figures scattered through the astrological tables and canons[1119] reveal the results of the reductions made by Al-Khwārizmī and by Az-Zarqalī of Ptolemy’s gross overestimate of the length of the Mediterranean, to which we have referred in a preceding chapter.[1120] The European student of these astrological works might have drawn a by no means contemptible map from the figures to be found in them had he been interested in what these figures could teach him of geography. Figure 6 is a map compiled from the coöordinates given in the Paris manuscript of the Marseilles Tables.
At the end of this list of geographical coördinates in many manuscripts additional figures not derived from Moslem sources are given. These show the positions of such points in Europe as London, Hereford, Paris, Toulouse, Barcelona, Marseilles, Novara, Cremona, Florence, and Naples[1121] (see Fig. 12, in Notes to Ch. X). They were undoubtedly determined by observations made during our period or shortly after.
METHODS OF FINDING LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE
That such observations were carried out is entirely possible, for there is absolutely no doubt that methods of finding latitudes and longitudes were well understood in theory and were sometimes put to practical use. Rules are given for finding latitude in Az-Zarqalī’s Canons, in Plato of Tivoli’s translation of the Astronomy of Al-Battānī, and in many other astronomical and astrological treatises.[1122] Two principal methods were recommended. You may either measure with the astrolabe the altitude of the sun above the horizon at noon at the spring or autumn equinox and find the latitude by subtracting this angle from 90° or you may measure the altitude of the celestial pole above the horizon, which is the same as the latitude. As to longitude, the fact that there are differences in local time between points east and west of each other was recognized and clearly explained by several writers of our age.[1123] The Marseilles Tables give a rule for finding longitude by the observation of eclipses. Roger of Hereford indicates that he himself, by observing an eclipse in 1178, ascertained the positions of Hereford, Marseilles, and Toledo in relation to Arin, the world center of the Moslems.[1124] Gerard of Cremona describes a method of finding longitude by noting the distance of the moon from a given point in the heavens and thereby dispensing with eclipses,[1125] though it is doubtful whether this method was used until the sixteenth century. The lack of accurate instruments for ascertaining time must have rendered it extremely difficult to calculate longitude under any circumstances. Making allowances for this, it is surprising to find how accurate the few coöordinates that have come down to us seem to be, if our interpretation of them is correct.[1126]
The geographical interest of these figures and of investigations of this sort was not appreciated by the majority of the men of our age. The application of astronomical considerations to the problems of navigation was still in its infancy. The purpose of the investigator of the twelfth and early thirteenth century in finding geographical coöordinates was astrological. He wished to make use of them to transpose tables made originally for the meridian and parallel of one station to the meridian and parallel of another. Their influence on the cartography of the age was absolutely nil. It is probably safe to make the categorical statement that the maps and geographical treatises of the century and a half preceding the year 1250 were drawn and written with almost complete disregard of any astronomical considerations whatsoever.
XI. CARTOGRAPHY
The maps of our period give us the most convincing possible illustrations of the geographical ideas that were current.[1127] Their bright colors, naïve legends, childlike but often skillfully drawn vignettes, and preposterous inaccuracy take us back into the atmosphere of a credulous and uncritical age. We can catch much more of the flavor of the popular geography of the Middle Ages by a hasty glance at one of the crude Beatus representations of the world than by plowing through many of the dry pages of compilations like the De imagine mundi.
In this chapter there will be given a brief analysis of these maps as specimens of the cartographer’s art and an explanation of certain points which all, or most, of them have in common.
INACCURACY
What strikes us first is their extraordinary inaccuracy. It is easy to laugh at this because subconsciously but inevitably we compare the outlines of seas, continents, and regions as represented in these maps with the outlines with which we have become familiar in modern atlases. We tend to forget that the contours of Europe, Asia, and Africa as we now know them are not images that have been stamped upon the minds of men at all times, that their accurate representation is the result of a series of long and laborious observations completed only at a relatively recent date. Hence it is somewhat unjust to reproach the medieval cartographer with his inaccuracy, for the reason that accuracy in the present-day sense was something impossible for him to achieve. The Greeks and Moslems, to be sure, had made far better maps than did the men of the Middle Ages; but, unfortunately, Greek maps had perished, few Arabic maps came through to the West, and the prevalent ignorance of Greek made it impossible for the Occidental scholar to gain inspiration from treatises on cartography written in that tongue.
ACCURACY NOT DEEMED NECESSARY
Furthermore, it is a mistake to regard accuracy as the goal and ideal of the medieval map maker. To gain a sympathetic understanding of his work we must see what purposes he intended it to fulfill. He drew maps to accompany and clarify the written texts to which they were usually subsidiary. The maps were more or less in the nature of diagrammatic sketches on which the features of the earth’s surface were shown in a general way, and the draftsman understood perfectly well that all he could hope to give was a rough approximation to relative positions. The medieval scribe and map maker was an artist who took pride in the beauty of his work. The same motives which impelled him to enliven his manuscript with a multitude of miniatures led him to relieve the coldly geometrical outlines of his map by lines and colors pleasing to the eye, by entertaining sketches and readable legends. He was creating something very different from the modern cartographic or topographic sheet that stands on its own merits as an independently useful, scientific document and from which we can get precise information about distances, heights, positions, and terrain. He would have branded any man a fool who thought that one could hope to determine from his map the distance from Jerusalem to England or from the mouth of the Ganges to the mouth of the Nile. In other words, most medieval maps—including wall maps—were nothing more than rough diagrams converted into works of art.
When, during the latter years of the thirteenth century, the sailors of the Mediterranean, driven by the necessity of securing reliable aids to navigation, began piece by piece to construct marine charts upon which the contours of the coasts were shown with an approach to modern correctness, we have indeed a revolution in cartographic art and geographical science.
Bearing in mind these considerations, we see that the major inaccuracies of medieval maps are (1) exaggeration in the scale of particular regions at the expense of others and (2) distortion, often amounting to a complete failure to show places in their proper relative positions. The first of these inaccuracies was usually deliberate, the second more or less unavoidable. Both are well-known characteristics of our modern American railway folder maps.
EXAGGERATION
The purpose of exaggeration was, of course, to emphasize the most interesting and significant localities. For example, on many maps of the world, Palestine—about which a good deal was known and in which interest naturally was centered—is shown to be almost as large as all the rest of Asia put together. The Jerome map of the East[1128] exaggerates Asia Minor to an enormous size, making it a greater distance from Constantinople to Mount Ararat than from Armenia to Taprobane (Ceylon). On the other hand, the Jerome map of Palestine itself[1129] would lead us to believe that the district lying between the Lebanon, the Jordan, and the sea is at least three times as large as the Anatolian peninsula. Certainly nobody ever thought that such proportions actually obtain in nature. Similarly, the plans of cities that are not infrequently included in maps are often immensely enlarged in relation to the surrounding country, as, for example, in the case of London, Rome, Acre, and Jerusalem on Matthew Paris’ pictorial itinerary[1130] and map of Palestine,[1131] and Jerusalem on the “Situs Ierusalem”[1132] (see Fig. 7).
DISTORTION
Errors arising from distortion were due partly to ignorance and partly to the necessity of making the map fit either the page upon which it was drawn or else a preconceived idea of an oval, or circular world. The “Cotton,” or “Anglo-Saxon,” map[1133] several of the Beatus series,[1134] and even Matthew Paris’ maps of Britain[1135] (the best of the whole period; see Fig. 9, p. 343, below) show a semi-rectangular land mass corresponding to the pages of the codices. On the latter a legend frankly admits that, if only the size of the page permitted, the island would be shown longer than it is (“Si pagine pateretur, haec totalis insula longior esse deberet”).[1136] The manner in which geography was forced to conform to a circular or oval world is admirably illustrated in the treatment of the islands of the ocean. On the Beatus series[1137] and on Lambert’s mappaemundi,[1138] Britain and the other islands appear as small, round, oval, or rectangular blocks more or less regularly spaced in the circumambient ocean. Other maps, like that of Henry of Mayence[1139] (see inset of Fig. 6, p. 245, above), fit the islands into recesses in the oceanic shores of the continental areas so that the smooth outlines of the whole land mass are preserved.
An extreme of confusion and disregard for reality is found in one of the Beatus group[1140] preserved in Paris. Here it is difficult to make out which continent is which. India, for instance, lies just across the Red Sea from Spain (it is doubtful in what direction); Arabia would seem to be in the farthest Orient, adjoined by Greece on one side and Thrace on the other. Such absurdities are unusual, but even the best maps of the period show serious errors when measured by modern standards. The “Cotton,”[1141] for instance, in such a well-known part of the world as Italy, locates Ravenna on the Mediterranean shore southeast of Rome and shows an amazing eastward displacement of Arabia and the Red Sea, though in many other respects its geography, relatively speaking, is very good.
TECHNIQUE
The diagrammatic character of these maps is evident in the technique of their workmanship. They all show a tendency toward geometrical lines, curves, and symmetry. This is carried further on some than on others (as, for example, in the cruder specimens of the Beatus group[1142]); but, in nearly all, the ocean is represented as a smooth circular band of even width; and, in many, rivers and mountains follow direct lines or regular curves. It is obvious that the ruler and compass were not neglected.
CONVENTIONS
Moreover, certain cartographic conventions were followed. In the great majority of cases east was placed at the top, and some authorities have endeavored to trace this convention back to the maps of the Romans.[1143] While this explanation of its origin may be true, the traditions of the Church, which placed in the Orient the Garden of Eden together with the fountain of the waters of the world and of human life, must have had much to do toward perpetuating it. Conventions of a sort were also observed in the use of colors on colored maps: seas and rivers were nearly always blue or green, except for the Red Sea, which was invariably red. Less uniform was the color used for mountains: on the map of the world of Henry of Mayence[1144] and on one of Lambert’s mappaemundi[1145] they are red; the “Cotton”[1146] shows them a brilliant green; and one of the maps of Matthew Paris,[1147] a yellow.
SYMBOLS AND LEGENDS
Symbols representing the various features of the earth’s surface were more or less conventionalized, though we can hardly say that any definitely developed “conventional signs” were in use. It is the usual intention of symbols as employed on modern maps to reproduce the appearance of the various features more or less as they look when viewed from above. This is relatively recent development; on medieval maps such elements as mountains, forests, and cities were shown as they appear from the side. In addition to symbols, legends were extensively employed to explain details of the map’s surface, and sometimes these were expanded to considerable length to include historical data and other points of interest. A large variety of subjects were represented on these maps by symbols, vignettes, and legends.
The atmosphere figures in the Turin Beatus[1148] in pictures at the four corners of wind blowers seated astride of wind bags. On the Jerome map of the East[1149] the names of certain of the winds are written along the eastern border, and wind blowers were familiar figures in the cartography of a later period than ours.
The ocean and inland seas, usually tinted green or blue, are generally without symbols to emphasize their watery nature, except perhaps for pictures of fish. On two of the Beatus series,[1150] however, lines are drawn running parallel to the coasts, showing that the medieval draftsman had hit upon and crudely executed a modern scheme of representing water. The Guido map of Italy[1151] represents the sea by scalloped lines. On the Guido map of the world[1152] the size of the Mediterranean and its branches is enormously enlarged;[1153] whereas the worst examples of the Beatus group[1154] show the inland seas as narrow channels bounded by straight shores.
The width of rivers is nearly always immensely exaggerated; on some maps rivers appear to be as wide as the seas themselves. Only the “Cotton”[1155] forms an exception in representing them (except for the Nile) as single lines. On the whole, hydrography is drawn arbitrarily. Streams cross each other, separate, and connect one sea with another; though the Jerome maps,[1156] certain of the Beatus series,[1157] and the “Cotton”[1158] place the headwaters of many of the rivers of Asia and Europe in mountain ranges.
Lakes are generally represented as bulb-shaped bodies from which rivers rise or into which they expand.
No attempt was made to show by symbols different kinds of land surface, except perhaps by Matthew Paris in one of his maps of Britain,[1159] which differentiates the marshy country of the eastern shires from the rest of the island. On certain members of the Beatus group[1160] we read legends in Africa and Asia calling the country “deserta et arenosa;” and legends appearing on Matthew Paris’ maps[1161] describe the boggy, wild, and mountainous country of northern Scotland and Wales. The Paris Beatus No. II[1162] has a legend in a remote part of Asia indicating “land uninhabitable on account of the abundance of water.”
Mountain ranges were generally represented by jagged, saw-tooth lines running parallel to straight lines;[1163] particularly high or famous peaks, by a single great pyramid. Such pyramids are prominent features in the Beatus series,[1164] where woods are often shown growing upon them. The Hyrcanian Forest is depicted and labeled on the Jerome map of Palestine,[1165] and the pepper forests of India are indicated on the Jerome map of the East.[1166]
Among the works of man cities and buildings take a foremost place, represented by vignettes of castles, towers, and churches. On several maps[1167] especially notable works are depicted, as the lighthouse of Alexandria, the tower of Babel, the columns of Alexander and Hercules; and the seas are sometimes filled with ships. As to men themselves, the legends give the names of cities, provinces, and countries. The Jerome maps[1168] give a series of tribal names in Scythia. Adam and Eve with the serpent were stereotyped features enlivening the East on many but by no means all the maps of our age; and on the Osma Beatus[1169] we see the uniformly gloomy features of the twelve apostles distributed over the earth’s surface (see Fig. 4, p. 123, above).
The monsters of India were also represented by vignettes of a skiapod, or shadowfoot, on two of the Beatus group,[1170] where this uncomfortable creature is shown as the most prominent inhabitant of the austral continent (see Fig. 4) and the existence of other monsters is hinted at by legends referring to griffons, cynocephali, and the like.
SUMMARY
In surveying the extant maps of our period as a whole, and in comparing them with one another, it is impossible to detect any appreciable development from worse cartography to better. To be sure, Matthew Paris’ three maps of Britain[1171] (Fig. 9, p. 343, below), made at the very end of our century and a half, are probably also the best. But they represent a limited area; and among the maps of the world the “Cotton,” or Anglo-Saxon,[1172] which possibly dates from the twelfth century but may be very much older, holds by all odds the highest rank so far as cartographic excellence goes. The complex and elaborate wall map of the late thirteenth century in Hereford Cathedral[1173] and the immense Ebstorf map at Hanover (dated 1284)[1174] represent the culmination of a process in the direction of increasing elaboration that had been in progress throughout the age. They do not indicate any improvement in cartographic standards but rather, as was the case with some of the great works of compilation of the time, a multiplication of fabulous and incongruous detail. Beazley dismisses them rather summarily as monstrosities. They are the cartographic counterparts of the Image du monde and the Livre du trésor of Brunetto Latino.