Chapter V: The Place of Geography in the Medieval Classification of Knowledge

Geography in the Middle Ages did not form a distinct and separate science. The student who learned anything of geography learned it incidentally to the study of other subjects and never thought of it as sufficiently dignified to enjoy a place by itself in the scholastic curriculum. Even the word “geography” was scarcely ever used.[552] The term _cosmographia_, sometimes employed to distinguish certain aspects of our subject from geometry, included practically all branches of natural history, the sciences of animals, rocks, monstrosities, and meteorological phenomena. On the other hand, cosmography did not comprise many of the topics with which we are concerned, particularly those lying on the border line between geography, astronomy, and geology. The question of the origin of the earth was in the province of the theologian of the Middle Ages.

GEOGRAPHY INCLUDED UNDER GEOMETRY

The well-known seven liberal arts formed the foundation of the work in the medieval schools. From them the student might advance to higher researches in philosophy and theology, but the seven arts were the base of all learning.[553] Martianus Capella’s _De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii_ was an attractive and somewhat imaginative exposition of the arts and had become one of the most popular of medieval textbooks long before the twelfth century.[554] Here each art is personified as a gorgeously clad woman, and the seven together compose the escort of “Philosophy.”

In practical teaching, the arts were divided into two groups: the trivium, comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (or logic); and the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy (astrology), and music. Geoffrey of St. Victor, in his _Fons philosophiae_, gives[555] an allegorical description of the arts as a spring which divides into two main streams, the trivium and quadrivium, that in turn separate into three and four lesser streams respectively. The teaching of practically all the natural science of the Middle Ages was included in the quadrivium. Geometry was generally expanded to include geography and quite naturally so in view of prevalent opinions regarding its origin. Adelard of Bath, in his _De eodem et diverso_, repeats an old story to the effect that in the early days men began to set up stones as boundaries.[556] Disputes about claims inevitably arose, in Libya because of sand, and in Egypt because the Nile often obliterated or destroyed the stones. This necessitated the invention of the science of geometry, or surveying, by the application of which the bounds might be replaced so that it would be “possible for all the centuries to have an everlasting rule for the measurement of land.”[557] Out of the invention of geometry, Adelard adds, arose subsequently the custom of subdividing territory into areas of various sizes.[558] Thus it happened that geometry had become closely allied in the classical and medieval mind with matters of geographical or topographical interest. Capella includes his long geographical discourse among chapters devoted to geometry and makes his symbolical figure of the latter science carry in one hand a compass and in the other a sphere to represent the terrestrial globe.[559] Alan of Lille, in the _Anticlaudianus_, describes Geometry as carrying a scale with which she measured the earth: “The maid carries a rod by which she encircles the entire earth.”[560] In the sculptured figures of the cathedrals Geometry is often depicted compass in hand.[561]

GEOGRAPHY INCLUDED UNDER ASTROLOGY

Geography was not always placed in a subordinate position to geometry in the quadrivium. In the _De divisione philosophiae_ of Dominicus Gondisalvi, which follows the Aristotelian rather than the Platonic division of knowledge, we find our science grouped under astrology. Of the latter art, Dominicus says,[562] there are three parts: the first is concerned with the number and shape of the heavenly bodies; the second with their movements; and the third with the earth, those regions that are inhabited and those that are not, the climates, and the varying influences exerted by the location of places and the revolutions of the universe over happenings on the earth’s surface.[563]

GEOGRAPHY AND THE ARISTOTELIAN DIVISION OF LEARNING

Both geometry and astrology belonged in the quadrivium. Where did the higher study of the arts of the quadrivium fall in the general classification of knowledge?

The medieval mind tended to seek for a logical and symmetrical subdivision of the sum of all knowledge. The desire for systematization found its supreme expression in the great philosophic structures of the thirteenth century, the systems founded on Aristotle and devised by such men as Albertus Magnus. Prior to the thirteenth century confusion had reigned. According to the Platonists, who divided philosophy into logic, ethics, and physics, the study of the mathematical and natural sciences—and, therefore, of geography—fell under the heading of physics. Aristotle, more logically perhaps, had divided the subject matter of all human learning into two great categories, theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge included physics, mathematics, and metaphysics (or theology). The studies of the quadrivium were thrown by the Aristotelians under the heading of mathematics: geography, then, became to those who followed the Aristotelian classification—Gondisalvi, Hugh of St. Victor,[564] Roger Bacon—a sub-department of mathematics.

But on the whole we need not linger over this topic, because the question of exactly where geography belonged in the artificial systems devised by the medieval mind was largely a matter of academic interest even in the Middle Ages and was without influence on the actual condition of the geographical lore of that time.