Chapter XII: Regional Geography (3)

Traces of each of the last two theories are to be found in the writings of our period. According to the accepted interpretation of Scripture, the Nile was the same as the Gihon, one of the four rivers of Paradise, and its ultimate source must therefore have been in the east, where Paradise was nearly always thought to be. It is also possible that early Christian monks in Abyssinia may have learned of the course of certain of the eastern tributaries of the Atbara which rise close to the Red Sea, and this information, in the devious course of its transmission to Western Europe, may have been confused in such a way as to foster belief that one of these minor streams was the headwaters of the main river itself.[1428] In any case, Orosius,[1429] whose words were copied by Gervase of Tilbury,[1430] made the Nile spring from the ground near Mossylon Emporium on the shores of the Red Sea and, after flowing westward for some distance, turn north to enter Egypt. But he also said that other authorities state that the river rises far in the west and that, after an underground course through the sands and thence through a great lake, it runs eastward across the Ethiopian desert even as far as the ocean and then turns to the left into Egypt. In any case, he adds, it is true that there is a large river which has exactly such a source and produces all the monsters that the Nile does. The barbarians who dwell near its source call this latter river the Dara, but other natives name it the Nuchul. The Dara is mentioned by Pliny and the Nuchul by Mela; perhaps they represent a reminiscence of the generally eastward-flowing Niger. Orosius suggested that this river, coming from the west, may well contribute by an underground channel to the westward-flowing stream that springs from the earth near the Red Sea. Isidore seems to have derived from Orosius the idea of a West African origin of the Nile, its disappearance under ground, and subsequent emergence on the shores of the Red Sea and thence of its encircling of Ethiopia before flowing down into Egypt,[1431] and in this idea he was followed by the author of the _De imagine mundi_.[1432]

Orosius’ and Isidore’s theories are graphically represented on the maps. Several of the Beatus maps simply show the river springing from mountains in the western part of the continent and swinging east and north into the Mediterranean.[1433] The symbols and legends on the St. Sever Beatus[1434] indicate (see Fig. 2, p. 69, above) that the river originates in the neighborhood of the Atlas Mountains; thence, passing beneath the sands, it expands into a vast lake, whence it flows toward the east through an immense swamp, like the Maeotic Swamp, but surrounded by mountains. After this it turns to the left, envelops the Isle of Meroë, and flows down into Egypt. Other maps, like the Cotton, Henry of Mayence (inset on Fig. 6, p. 245, above), and Jerome map of Palestine are even more faithful to the Orosian description. The sources of the Nile proper are shown near the Red Sea in the eastern part of Ethiopia, but another large river is also depicted, coming from the far west near the Atlas range and emptying into a large lake not far from the sources of the Nile, with which the lake may communicate. The Cotton map[1435] splits this river into two sections and calls the upper section “Dara” and the lower “Fluvius Nilus.” On the Jerome map of Palestine[1436] it is called “Nuchul” and made to flow into a lake of the same name. Henry of Mayence[1437] names it “fl. Gion.”

TRADITIONAL VIEW OF CENTRAL AFRICA

As a matter of fact, no new information about Central Africa was brought to light during our entire period or had been during many centuries before, and no new theories were propounded. Old and hackneyed notions were handed down from one writer to another. Simar, in a recent admirable study of the geographical ideas regarding Central Africa in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trenchantly sums up the whole matter with the following words, which might equally well be applied to ideas regarding many other parts of the world: “These meager notions soon became stereotyped and were repeated by the scholars of the Middle Ages, who vied with each other in their unalterable ardor. From Martianus Capella in the fourth century to Honorius of Autun [here the author of the _De imagine mundi_ is meant] in the twelfth, passing by Macrobius, Priscian, Saint Avitus, Gregory of Tours, Jornandes, the Venerable Bede, Raban Maur, Dicuil, Alfred the Great, Alfric, Adelbold, Richer, Asaph, Hermann Contractus, Robert of St. Martin of Auxerre, Otto of Freising, Hugh of St. Victor, and even, later, the historian Joinville, men copied Solinus, Orosius, and Isidore and adopted like them a round _oikoumene_ separated from the _terra incognita_ by an impassable equatorial ocean, the uninhabitability of the torrid zone, the limit of Africa this side of the equator, the sources of the Nile in Mauretania, its course through Ethiopia from west to east, its ultimate origin in the Terrestrial Paradise situated to the east of India, and its submarine course as far as its emergence in the western part of Libya.”[1438]

_THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA_

THE NAME “MEDITERRANEAN”

To the great chain of inland seas that lies between Africa, Asia, and Europe the Romans had applied the name of _mare internum_ or _mare nostrum_. Solinus was probably the first to describe these as mediterranean seas, and Isidore the first to convert the term “mediterranean” into a proper name.[1439] The authority of Isidore was sufficient to make this designation familiar to future ages; and it was used by the author of the _De imagine mundi_ and by Gervase of Tilbury with the same connotation that it enjoys at the present day.[1440] The term, however, was not firmly established in popular use in our period and is conspicuously absent from most of the maps, which as a rule either give no name at all for the sea as a whole or else employ some vague designation like _mare nostrum_ or _mare magnum_.[1441]

Gervase of Tilbury says[1442] that the Mediterranean is shaped like a letter Y with two branches, a longer one extending from the entrance (Strait of Gibraltar) to the Hellespont, and a shorter one forming the Sea of Alexandria or of Syria. This comparison suggests that Gervase must have had before him a typical medieval map of the world with east at the top. More detailed is the account of the Mediterranean in Plato of Tivoli’s translation of Al-Battānī’s _Astronomy_.[1443] Here the “Roman Sea” is described as extending a distance of 5000 miles [!] from the Isle of Gadir (Cadiz) to Tyre and Sidon; it has various branches, one running off towards the Narbonnese, one called Adriatic, another called Pontus; and it contains a total of one hundred and sixty-two inhabited islands, of which five are especially noteworthy on account of their size.

THE MEDITERRANEAN DURING THE CRUSADES

During the Crusades the Mediterranean served as one of the main highways from the West to the Holy Land, and hence the men of Europe were enabled to learn much of its waters and coasts. Though the principal armies of the First Crusade had proceeded overland, in the years that followed the establishment of the states of the Crusaders there was constant coming and going by sea between the Levant and the ports of Italy, France, and England. The sea route was the way taken by the armies of Philip Augustus and Richard Coeur-de-Lion in 1190; by the cosmopolitan army that captured Constantinople in 1204; by Frederick II and the ill-starred expedition of St. Louis to Egypt; as well as by innumerable pilgrims, soldiers, merchants, and other individuals unconnected with any definite Crusading enterprise.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR NAVIGATION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

Perhaps the most attractive account of the Mediterranean derived from the literature of the Crusaders is to be found in the chronicles and histories recording the expedition of Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The _Gesta regis Ricardi_, mistakenly attributed to Benedict of Peterborough, and the _Chronica_ of Roger of Hoveden contain descriptions of routes and coasts, parts of which were undoubtedly drawn from manuals of navigation. Here we find much the same sort of data that at the present time is incorporated in our Coast Pilot books, a combination of practical advice to sailors with useful and interesting information about the waters, islands, and shores. Great care is taken to inform the navigator of the best and most practicable routes for him to follow. For example, two ways are mentioned of going from Marseilles to Acre, one through the open sea and the other near the coast.[1444] If the wind is favorable you can proceed by the first, leaving Sardinia and Sicily out of sight to the left, though you must constantly be on your guard against running too far to the right and falling afoul of the barbarian shores.[1445] With a good breeze this journey can be made in fifteen days,[1446] and vessels are safer on it from the menace of pirates than when they follow the coastwise route. On the other hand, the navigation is more difficult, and under no circumstances should this route be attempted by galleys, which might easily be sunk if a storm should come up. In the account of the coastwise route various menaces and dangers to ships are carefully pointed out. For instance, off the coast of Greece, about twenty miles from land and fifty from Modon, there is a low round rock called Triffar; and in order to avoid it ships are warned not to stand too far out to sea. West-bound vessels, however, are advised, instead of passing through the channels between “Chefeline” (Cephalonia), “Fale de Campar” (Ithaca), and the neighboring islands to keep out to sea, placing these islands on the right. Navigators are cautioned to beware of a sand bar in Corfu harbor with only four and a half _ulnae_ of water upon it. The dangers of the narrow and crooked channel between Corfu and the mainland make it advisable for vessels en route to Italy to avoid taking this passage and, by steering out to sea, to leave Corfu on the right. The harbor of Karentet (Santa Quaranta) is said to be a fine one, except for submerged reefs at the entrance and extending under about half of its area; the best approach for ships is not far from the Corfu side.

We find also many full and practical details regarding the distances between various points along the coasts, the width of straits, the length of islands; the names of seaport towns and now and then their products and other distinguishing features are mentioned, for example, the fact that Marseilles has an excellent harbor surrounded on all sides by hills, or that Almeria in Spain is far-famed for its manufacture of silk. Prominent landmarks are carefully pointed out: great mountains making promontories on the coast of Spain, sand banks, the mouths of rivers (like the Ebro, or the Salef in Asia Minor, “in which Frederick Barbarossa was drowned and from the neighborhood of the sources of which the three wise men were said to have come”), the high peaks in the interior of Crete, or the volcanoes of Sicily and the Lipari Isles. Marine life, such as the flying fish of the waters near Corsica and Sardinia as well as less credible monstrosities of the Gulf of Satalia on the southern coast of Asia Minor, also seems to have aroused the curiosity of the navigator and chronicler.[1447]

ISLANDS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

Most medieval maps show the islands of the Mediterranean scattered about with scant respect for their actual locations and relative sizes. The Guido map of the world, for instance, indicates but one island by name in the entire Mediterranean, and that is “Baleares.”[1448] The most important islands are fairly well represented on the St. Sever Beatus[1449] (Fig. 2, p. 69, above), but the draftsman of the Osma Beatus did not have room enough for Tenedos and Rhodes in the Mediterranean (Fig. 4, p. 123, above), and hence placed then in the circumambient ocean to the east of Taprobane![1450] In the _De imagine mundi_ and in the _Otia imperialia_ the islands are described in a dull and catalogue-like manner from the data given by Orosius and other classical authorities.[1451] The accounts of the Mediterranean in the chronicles which we have just been discussing also add little beside scattering details on Corfu and Cyprus and a significant observation that, owing to the danger from pirates, a large number of the islands of the Greek archipelago had been deserted by their inhabitants.[1452]

Guy of Bazoches, who journeyed overseas with the Crusaders to Syria in 1190, told in a letter to his nephews[1453] that on the third morning out from Marseilles they were in sight of Corsica and the many and varied inlets and promontories of its broken coast. The following day Sardinia was visible, likewise on the left. Sardinia, Guy wrote, might almost have been called free from poisonous serpents, were it not for one variety, the _solifuga_, which took the place of all the others, since the poisonous virulence of all serpents was concentrated in this one. Besides this there was a violently poisonous plant in Sardinia. On the other hand, these pests were compensated for by the presence of hot springs in several parts of the island which prevailed against the _solifuga_ and were good for broken bones and for the eyes. We have already spoken[1454] of Guy’s description of Sicily, which was reached soon after Sardinia was left behind. From Sicily Guy came to Crete, “a famous island and once powerful with a hundred cities.” Crete was blessed with an absence of all kinds of serpents, though the place of serpents was taken by a small animal called a _spalangius_, the bite of which was deadly. In the sea where Crete lay were the Cyclades, forming a circle around Delos, and Cyprus, more pleasing to the eye because of the richness of its fields, the delights of its vineyards, and its far-famed fertility.

_Sicily_

The critical position of Sicily on the routes between East and West and North and South, its peculiar volcanic phenomena, as well as the establishment of a Norman kingdom there, brought that island to the attention of the outside world.[1455] Sicily came inevitably to figure in the poetry and legend of the period both in France and in the isle itself. The song of Roland and the Breton cycle of legends of King Arthur were sung and related on Sicilian soil, and echoes of these popular romances found their way into the Latin literature of our age. One story had it that the peers of Charlemagne had passed through Sicily on their return from Jerusalem and had named mountains after Roland and Oliver. Godfrey of Viterbo wrote: “There stands a great mountain which was called Roland and another similarly called Oliver, and these names were applied by the bold dukes as memorials.”[1456] Gervase of Tilbury was inclined to treat skeptically the report of how, in his own day, King Arthur, said to have been enclosed within Mongibel (Etna), had appeared miraculously on the outside of the mountain.[1457] King Arthur also was associated in a French poem, _Florian et Florete_, with a distinctively Sicilian fairy, Morgain—who gave her name to the _fata morgana_, or mirage, over the Strait of Messina, and with Mongibel, an abode of supernatural beings. French poets writing of Sicily from far away often revealed an amazing ignorance of the geography of the isle, as is well shown by the _Dolopathos_ of Jean of Haute Seille, in which not only is the city of Mantua placed in Sicily but the insular character of the latter is entirely overlooked.[1458]

The travelers Conrad of Querfurt and Guy of Bazoches both discuss the phenomena of Etna[1459] and Scylla and Charybdis and refer to the stories of Arethusa and of the rape of Proserpina.[1460] Conrad identifies Taormina with the home of the minotaur.[1461] These twelfth-century travelers were well read in the classical mythology of the places they chose to visit.

With this mythical lore of the Mediterranean island should be contrasted a few excellent and graphic accounts given by eyewitnesses. The troubadour Ambroise, who sings of the expedition of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, tells us something of the contemporary population of Messina, consisting of Lombards, “Griffons” (or Greeks), and “persons of Saracen extraction.”[1462] The latter, he complained, treated the French pilgrims abominably, insulting them with evil gestures, calling them dogs, and acting in an especially objectionable manner when the Frenchmen tried to take liberties with the Saracens’ wives, a naïve admission not to the credit of the Frenchmen. We have already alluded to the graphic descriptions of Etna in the letters of Guy of Bazoches and in the second redaction of the _Image du monde_.[1463]

_EUROPE_

NORTHEASTERN EUROPE

Eastern and northeastern Europe were quite as shadowy and unfamiliar to the men of the West during our period as Central Asia or the heart of Africa. Classical tradition had placed in the northern part of Europe a range of mountains not far from the Ocean Stream, the Rhipaeans—perhaps an echo of some very early acquaintance with the Urals.[1464] Between these and the Ocean, so Gervase of Tilbury[1465] affirmed, there was a land in the vicinity of the “septentrional” circle (called thus from the “seven stars” and known to the Greeks as the “Arctic circle”) so cold as to be constantly frozen and uninhabitable. Another tradition dating back to remote antiquity placed the Hyperboreans far north in a region of temperate climate. Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon tried to prove that such a climate might be produced by the character of the mountains at very high latitudes.[1466] The rivers of Scythia, among them the Lentulus and the Tanaïs (Don), were said to have their sources in the Rhipaean Mountains, and of these the Tanaïs, which was the largest, after flowing past the altar of Augustus, constantly poured an immense volume of water into the Euxine (Black Sea) near Theodosia.[1467]

RUSSIA

More recent information about Russia had been acquired by men of the West, though it had not been widely disseminated. In regard to northern Russia the Northmen were in possession of much valuable knowledge. We have already mentioned their adventurous voyagings in the Baltic and around the North Cape into the White Sea to a region which they had called Biarma.[1468] There is evidence that their trade with Biarmaland was maintained throughout our period, although only three actual voyages after the tenth century are recorded: one in 1090, one in 1217, and one in 1222.[1469] A member of the expedition of 1217, however, crossed Russia to the Black Sea and penetrated ultimately to the Holy Land before returning to Norway.

Of southern Russia and the northern coasts of the Black Sea some slight knowledge had undoubtedly filtered into the West through the medium of the Italian merchants. Though Genoese, Pisans, and Venetians penetrated these regions in the twelfth century,[1470] the great expansion of Occidental commerce into the steppes and thence into the heart of Asia came only after the establishment of the Latin Empire in Constantinople in 1204 and after the conquest of the Ukraine and Crimea by the Mongols, whose relatively tolerant rule was favorable to the presence of European colonies and mercantile enterprise. Otto of Freising mentions the tribes dwelling to the north and east of Hungary on the plains of Russia, Petchenegs and Komans, devourers of raw and foul meats, such as those of horses and cats—tribes who inhabited a land which, though rich in game, had never felt the plow or rake.[1471] The Komans were also spoken of by Robert de Clari (died 1216) in his _Prise de Constantinople_ as a tent-dwelling folk, living on cattle, cheese, and milk and possessed of large herds of horses.[1472] We have already quoted from Matthew Paris’ graphic description of the Mongols,[1473] who swept into Russia in 1222–1224 and later, in 1240–1243, menaced Central Europe itself.

POLAND

Northwest of these tribes lay Poland, of which Ragewin gave a brief description in his continuation of Otto’s _Gesta Friderici_.[1474] Dwelling in a country bounded by the Oder on the west, the Vistula on the east, the Ruthenians and the Scythian Ocean on the north, and the Bohemian Forest on the south, the Poles, he tells us, are well protected by the character of the land on which they live. They are almost a barbaric people and are very quick to fight, partly because of their own inherent ferocity but partly too because of contact with more ferocious neighbors on the shores of the sea that washes their coasts.[1475]

SLAVIC EUROPE AS DESCRIBED BY BENJAMIN OF TUDELA AND PETACHIA OF
RATISBON

The Hebrew travelers Benjamin of Tudela and Petachia of Ratisbon also wrote of Slavic Europe, the former from hearsay, the latter from personal observation. Benjamin stated that Russia was “a great empire stretching from the gate of Prague to the gates of Kieff, the large city which is at the extremity of that Empire. It is a land of mountains and forests, where there are to be found animals called _vair_ [a species of marten], ermine, and sable”[1476] (Adler’s translation). It seems that Benjamin would include in Russia much of Bohemia, Galicia, and Poland, together with the Carpathian Mountains. Petachia, who traversed Russia, Caucasia, and Armenia on his way from Prague to Baghdad, was one of the few Occidental travelers of the Middle Ages who ventured into the land of the steppes before the overland journeys of John of Pian de Carpine, William of Rubruck,[1477] and others to the Mongol court during the middle and closing years of the thirteenth century. Petachia commented on the absence of mountains in Russia. He described accurately the tent-dwellers of Kedar, or the Ukraine (Petchenegs and Komans), noting especially the horsehide rafts on which they cross the great rivers; their diet of rice and millet boiled in milk and of raw flesh which they warm under the saddles of their horses; their custom of drinking from vessels of copper cast in the shape of a human face; their government in the hands of princes and nobles rather than of kings. He gave some details about that portion of the Sea of Azov now known as the Putrid Sea, telling us that when the wind blows from its foul surface in the direction of the Black Sea it causes the death of many people![1478]

HUNGARY

With Pannonia, or Hungary, Western Europe was in much more intimate contact than with Russia and Poland. Gervase of Tilbury, to be sure, adds little to what Orosius had told about this country,[1479] but in Otto of Freising’s _Gesta Friderici_ there is a description of both land and people.[1480] Otto writes that Pannonia is enclosed by woods and mountains, particularly by the range of the Apennines (_sic_); it forms a wide and well-watered plain, fed by springs and rivers; there are a great many woods stocked with game of every variety, and the land abounds in fields so rich and fertile that they can be likened either to the Paradise of God or else to Egypt. The aspect of the country is beautiful but rendered so rather by nature itself than by the work of man, for, owing to the barbaric state of civilization in which the people remain, walls and buildings are very rare. Boundaries are marked by the courses of great rivers and not by woods and hills. The names which Otto assigns to the borders of Pannonia have a distinctly modern sound, contrasting with the classical geographic nomenclature used by Gervase for all this part of the world. “Eastward, where the famous river Sawa (Save) is received by the Danube, Pannonia borders on Bulgaria; westward on Moravia and the eastern marches of the Teutons; southward on Croatia, Dalmatia, Hystria (Istria), or Carinthia; and northward on Boemia (Bohemia), Polimia (Poland), Ruthenia, etc.; to the northeast are the Pecenati (Petchenegs) and Falones (Komans), and to the southeast is Rama.” Otto also describes rather fully the tent-dwellers of the Hungarian plain. The country, he says, has suffered much through the invasions of barbarians, and hence no wonder it remains a land where the people are of rough speech and little culture. First the Huns overran this region, then the Avars, eaters of raw and unclean meat, and finally the Hungarians from Scythia. The latter have deep-set eyes, are ugly and small, wild and barbaric in speech and customs; and one is constrained to wonder at the injustice of fate, or, even more, at the patience of God, for giving such a beautiful country to such a monstrous folk. Otto then adds further details about the customs of the people: their deliberation in council, their unlimited obedience to the tyrannical and arbitrary authority of their kings, the rigid requirements of their military system. Their dwellings in the villages and towns are primitive to an extreme, the houses nearly always built of reeds, rarely of wood, and almost never of stone. As a matter of fact, the majority of the people lived both winter and summer in tents.

Relations between France and Hungary were fairly close in the twelfth century.[1481] Intermarriages between members of the reigning houses had induced many of the Hungarian nobles to imitate French manners and customs. French teaching monks and military orders (Templars and Hospitalers) had established themselves in the Danubian plain before the close of the century, and during the Crusades many Frenchmen found occasion to visit the eastern kingdom in one capacity or another.[1482] In the thirteenth century the Gallic colonies in Hungary became even more numerous than previously, and French merchants and architects were well known among the Magyars.[1483] Conversely, this French infiltration led to the dissemination of some knowledge of Hungary in France and to frequent mention of that country in the _chansons de geste_, though the phrase “to go to Hungary” was held to be synonymous with visiting any extremely distant and unknown region.[1484] It was not in the nature of the _chansons de geste_ to supply detailed geographical information, least of all about a remote country; and consequently the presence of any testimony at all of a geographical nature in them justifies our belief that the troubadours knew more of Hungary than their songs at first glance would seem to indicate. We are told that among the products of the Magyar kingdom were horses, mules, and donkeys, which were exported to France; that the gold of Hungary was well known in the West; and that there were many cities in this realm, though only one of these, Striguus, is mentioned by name.

BALKAN PENINSULA

Quite characteristically, in dealing with Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula, such writers as the author of the _De imagine mundi_[1485] and Gervase of Tilbury [1486] merely copied from Isidore and Orosius, who in turn had derived their knowledge from much earlier sources. The accounts of this part of Europe in these standard authorities of our period, though fairly full, were nearly a thousand years out of date. Even so, it comes as something of a shock to find that on the Jerome map of the East, drawn as late as 1150, a legend near the Ister (Danube) informs us that in this locality “the pygmies fight with the cranes.”[1487]

More recent information seems to have been gathered by Arnold of Lübeck. In the _Chronica Slavorum_[1488] he speaks of a city of Ravenelle,[1489] where the river Ravana flows into the Morava. This city, he says, lies in the midst of a wood, and its inhabitants are called Servi. They are sons of the devil, heathens, ravenous for meat, and worthy of their name, for they are the slaves of all low and foul passions and live like beasts but are even wilder than beasts. In such uncomplimentary terms Arnold describes the ancestors of the modern Serbians and adds that they were subjects of the kings of the Greeks, i. e. the Byzantine emperors.

In regard to the Balkan Peninsula as well as to Hungary, however, much knowledge had undoubtedly been gained through the Crusaders. The main route from the West to Constantinople by way of the Morava and Maritsa valleys was taken in the First Crusade by Godfrey of Bouillon; in the Second by Louis VII and Conrad III (1147); and, in the Third, Frederick Barbarossa followed it as far as Adrianople, whence he made his way into Asia Minor through Gallipoli and across the Dardanelles. Other leaders of the First Crusade had traveled overland from the Adriatic at Durazzo and Avlona to Thessalonica and thence eastward along the shore to the Bosporus. During the Fourth Crusade the Latin fleet coasted Dalmatia, Greece, and the Archipelago; and the founding of the Latin Empire, with its petty Frankish principalities in Greece and among the isles, inevitably established a connection between those parts of the world and Europe beyond the Alps.

Knowledge of Balkan countries was also derived from trade as well as from the enterprise of the Crusaders. In the twelfth century, Occidental colonies were to be found in practically all the important cities of the Byzantine Empire. Heyd in his _Histoire du commerce du Levant_[1490] gives a summary of the evidence on this subject, which shows that before the Fourth Crusade (1203–1204) there were in existence colonies, mostly of Italians from Genoa, Venice, and Pisa. Thessalonica harbored in its foreign quarter not only Italians, but Spaniards, Portuguese, and French. As commerce went mainly by sea, an important traffic had sprung up among the islands of the Archipelago and especially between Euboea, Crete, Rhodes, Lemnos, and the West, though prior to the Fourth Crusade Western merchants avoided penetrating the interior of Greece.

_Constantinople_

Constantinople was a great meeting place of merchants from all quarters of the known world and consequently a very important center for the dispersal of geographical knowledge. During the twelfth century Pisan, Venetian, and Genoese colonies flourished together there unharmoniously and vied with each other for trade privileges, but after 1204 the Venetians had matters very much in their own hands. Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, says[1491] that in 1180 there were no fewer than 60,000 Latins in Constantinople and that the majority of these were Italians. Benjamin of Tudela[1492] and other writers also tell of merchants here from Babylon, Mesopotamia, Media, Persia, Armenia, Iberia (in the Caucasus), Egypt, Palestine, Russia, Hungary, the country of the Petchenegs, Bulgaria, Spain, France, and Germany, though the Latins were by all odds the most numerous among this multitude. After the establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204 we hear of the presence of Provençaux, Spaniards, citizens of Ancona, and even Danes and English,[1493] though the latter were probably mercenaries rather than traders. With this motley population Constantinople was preëminently the great cosmopolitan city of the world and as such served as a vast clearing house for geographical information brought thither from all four corners of the earth.

Benjamin of Tudela described the Constantinople of his day in graphic terms,[1494] alluding especially to the busy activity of its merchants, the costly magnificence of its buildings (notably the Church of Santa Sophia and the Palace of Blachernae), as well as to the wealth of its Greek inhabitants, who “go clothed in garments of silk with gold embroidery and ride horses and look like princes” (Adler’s translation). He was impressed by the great shows given annually on Christmas Day at the Hippodrome, the like of which were to be seen in no other land; here, in accord with the old Roman custom, lions, leopards, bears, and wild asses were made to engage in combat. The Jews of Constantinople were segregated in the quarter of Pera, where their condition was very miserable, and they were subjected to many indignities. “Yet,” Benjamin adds, “the Jews are rich and good, kindly and charitable, and bear their lot with cheerfulness.”

ITALY

Otto of Freising’s _Gesta Friderici_[1495] probably contains one of the best general descriptions of Italy dating from the time of the Crusades.[1496] Otto says that the Italian peninsula as a whole is divided into three parts. The districts that once constituted the Roman _colonia_ form _ulterior Italia_, which consists of Venetia, Emilia, and Liguria, with Aquileia, Ravenna, and Milan respectively as capitals. The part “within” the Apennines, where Rome and Tuscany are situated, is known as _interior Italia_. Beyond these mountains (to the south) are the fields from which Campania derives its name. This part of the peninsula extends as far as the Faro, or strait cutting off Sicily from the mainland—Sicily itself being counted with Sardinia and other neighboring isles as a part of Italy—and is known as _citerior Italia_, or Magna Graecia. In Otto’s day this third portion was more commonly called Apulia or Calabria. In conclusion Otto adds that some authorities preferred to divide Italy into two parts only, _ulterior_ and _citerior_, the latter consisting of the above-mentioned middle and southern districts together.[1497]

Otto waxes particularly enthusiastic about Northern Italy, a region which he conceived of as bordered or hedged in by the high and craggy ranges of the Apennines and “Pyrenean” (_sic_) Alps, stretching out in either direction, enclosing the region in their midst. Like a “garden of delights” (the term frequently used to describe Paradise), this district is bounded by the Pyrenean Alps on the north, the Apennines (vulgarly called Mount Bardo) on the south, the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west, and the Adriatic on the east. Watered by the course of the great river Po, or Eridanus (which topographers considered one of the three most famous streams of Europe, says Otto), and by other rivers, blessed with a rich soil and a temperate climate, this land is most fertile in grain, in the vine and olive, and produces such a variety of fruit trees—especially chestnuts, figs, and olives—that it resembles an immense grove.[1498]

To the world beyond the Alps, Lombardy was the best-known part of Italy. Godfrey of Viterbo[1499] dilates on its immense potential strength, with thirty cities, the equal of any one of which could scarcely be found elsewhere in the world. The population of Lombardy is thicker than the hair on a woman’s head, and rare are the times when a ship cannot be seen on the Po. Otto of Freising[1500] gives an account of the Lombard invasion of Northern Italy, of the founding of Milan and its neighboring cities, and of the free government and liberal democratic institutions of the Italian city states.

Gunther of Pairis amplified and made more picturesque Otto of Freising’s description of Italy, but it is doubtful whether he added any observations resulting from first-hand acquaintance with the peninsula. Whatever the sources from which he derived his descriptions of Lombardy and Apulia—his own imagination, personal experience, the inspiration of classical poetry, or the _Gesta Friderici_—if we compare them, we find that the differences between the inhabitants of the northern and southern parts of the peninsula were fully appreciated in the twelfth century. The Lombards, Gunther says,[1501] are a keen, skillful, and active people, foresighted in counsel, expert in justice, strong in body and spirit, full of life and handsome to look upon, with light, supple bodies that give them great powers of endurance, economical and always moderate in eating and drinking, masters of their hands and mouths, honorable in every business transaction, mighty in the arts and always eagerly striving for the new. Lovers of freedom and ready to face death for freedom’s sake, these people have never been willing to submit to kings.

Apulia in the south, Gunther goes on to say, is also a fair country, rich in all the blessings of this earth:[1502] fruit trees, vineyards, pasture lands, towns and cities, all of which make a gloriously beautiful prospect. But what a contrast its people present to the Lombards, dirty, lazy, weak, good-for-nothing idlers that they are!

_Rome_

Rome must have been in a sad state of decay and dilapidation, if we can place any trust in the picturesque accounts of the city given by Otto and Gunther.[1503] From our period there also dates a little booklet on the topography and monuments of Rome, which exerted wide influence and enjoyed great popularity during the thirteenth and later centuries. This work, the _Mirabilia urbis Romae_, contains a discourse on the antiquities and architecture of the Eternal City. It is in three parts. Part One treats of “the foundation of Rome and of her chief monuments, with chapters on the town walls, gates, arches, hills, baths, palaces, theaters, bridges, cemeteries, places where the saints suffered martyrdom,” and so on; Part Two contains “divers histories touching certain famous places and images in Rome,” that is legends of both classical and Christian origin; and Part Three is a “perambulation of the city,” like Baedeker in its fullness of topographical and architectural detail. Though this book is a dry catalogue, its very existence and popularity are significant of the fact that antiquities aroused interest in the twelfth century and that the archeological tourist was not altogether a product of the days of the Renaissance. Gregorovius, the historian of medieval Rome, says of the _Mirabilia_: “In this curious composition ... Roman archeology, which has now attained such appalling proportions, puts forth its earliest shoots in a naïve and barbarous form and in a Latin as ruinous as its subject.”[1504]

Another contemporary writer on Roman monuments, an unknown Master Gregory, includes a description of six out of the seven wonders of the world in his short tract on the marvels of the Eternal City![1505]

_Antiquities_

In a letter of the traveler Conrad of Querfurt describing a journey through Italy[1506] we also find a strongly antiquarian interest in evidence. Conrad’s primary concern was for the mythological and historical associations of the places he visited, and he took a genuine tourist’s pride in being able to say that he had seen with his own eyes spots made famous by the poets. His route carried him over the Alps to Mantua, thence down the length of the peninsula to the Strait of Messina and into Sicily. He tells us that he would have been amazed at the smallness of the famous Rubicon and that such a paltry stream could have presented any kind of obstacle to Caesar, had not a native informed him that in rainy weather the river was much wider. In the vicinity of Naples he noted, besides the baths of Virgil at Baiae, certain natural features: Mount “Veseus” (Vesuvius), which every ten years sends out flames and stinking ashes, and the subterranean passages under Monte Barbaro. Calabria, he says, is a rough and trackless country through which it is necessary to pass in order to reach Sicily.

SPAIN

Gervase of Tilbury[1507] adds little besides a list of the archiepiscopal sees and their suffragans to the dry details which Orosius[1508] and the _De imagine mundi_[1509] had furnished concerning Spain. In the _Chronica_[1510] of Roger of Hoveden the story of the passage of Richard Coeur-de-Lion’s fleet around the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula was the occasion for a discussion of the geography of that part of the world, together with a list of the towns of the coast. Roger[1511] enumerates the bishoprics of Spain and, in his description of Castile, mentions Toledo as the seat of the primate, under whom there were twenty-one bishops. He says that there were two hundred castles in Castile and, furthermore, that Castile contained a mountain from which were taken daily many thousand camel-loads of earth. No matter how big an excavation was made, if rain fell it was always filled up again on the following day. This earth was sold in the surrounding countries for washing the heads and garments of Christians and pagans alike. Roger also is careful to bring out the distinction between Christian Spain, consisting of Navarre, Castile, Portugal, Aragon, and the “lands of the kings of St. James” (Leon), on the one hand, and Saracenic Spain, comprising the kingdoms of Cordova, “Gahang” (Jaén), Murcia, and Valencia, on the other.

THE ALPS

Otto of Freising asserted that the Alps and Apennines join near Tortona,[1512] though he was not inclined to dispute a prevalent belief that these two mountain systems form in effect one continuous range.[1513] In order to demonstrate this, he says people assert that, as viewed from the deck of a vessel lying off Genoa, the two systems appear to be continuous and to constitute the same mountain range and that, according to Isidore, Pannonia was enclosed by the Apennines, from which it took its name. He argues that the portion of the Apennines which encloses Pannonia certainly cannot be the same as that part which is to be found in peninsular Italy and is there called Mount Bardo, but must be a continuation of the “Pyrenean Alps.”

The Alps themselves not only are a great, wall-like barrier—broken, to be sure, by relatively low breaches—between Italy and the North, but themselves constitute a broad band of territory which until comparatively recent times has been difficult of access and during the Middle Ages was for the most part virtually _terra incognita_ to the outside world. The existence of thickly populated centers of civilized life on either side had, however, long before our age led to familiarity with the main routes through the mountains. There were four or five motives which induced men to cross the Alps in the Middle Ages. Ecclesiastics traversed them when bound to and from Rome on official missions. German emperors en route to Italy to be crowned and to attempt to regulate Italian affairs led their armies over their defiles. Pilgrims and Crusaders toiled painfully through their passes towards Rome and the East; and merchants brought their wares across the snows back and forth from the busy cities of Northern Italy. Taking it all in all, there must have been a large number of men scattered throughout Germany, France, England, and the Scandinavian countries who were acquainted with the appearance of Alpine scenery and the difficulties of Alpine travel. Between 1100 and 1250 seven emperors made no less than thirty-nine journeys over Alpine passes.[1514] The size of their armies varied greatly. The numbers given for the immense concourse (30,000) which Henry V is said to have mustered in 1110 at Roncaglia after conducting them through the mountains were undoubtedly exaggerated.[1515] At all events, the army was so great that Henry had to divide it and send part over the Brenner Pass and part over the Great St. Bernard. The numbers of Frederick Barbarossa’s armies probably ranged from 10,000 to 15,000. The time of year chosen for undertaking the journey by those among the medieval travelers who were free to make their own plans—notably the pilgrims—was usually the month of August. Albert of Stade near Hamburg, writing in his chronicle early in the thirteenth century, says that the journey should be undertaken “about the middle of August, since the air is then temperate, the roads dry, there is no excess of water, the days are sufficiently long for traveling and the nights for rest, and you will find at this time the storehouses full of fresh fruits.”[1516] Political exigencies, however, forced the emperors to conduct their hosts across at all seasons and under all conditions of weather.[1517]

Of the many Transalpine routes, the Mont Cenis, Great St. Bernard, Septimer, and Brenner were the most frequented during our period. These were the passes over which trade flowed back and forth between Italy and the North.[1518] English and North German pilgrims made frequent use of the Mont Cenis route because it offered an easy way, a long and simple ascent to and descent from the crest of the ridge, and no subsidiary passes to surmount.[1519] Pilgrims from Iceland, though they also used the Mont Cenis, seem to have preferred the Great St. Bernard;[1520] but when bound for the Holy Land they would sometimes traverse the Carnic Alps and embark from Venice.[1521] The Brenner Pass was, of course, most used by the Germans and formed the grand highway of the imperial expeditions. Out of the thirty-nine imperial crossings between 1100 and 1250 nearly half were made by the Brenner, four by the Great St. Bernard, six by the Septimer, three by the Mont Cenis, two by the Lukmanier, and six by other passes.[1522]

USE OF TERMS “TRANSALPINE” AND “CISALPINE”

In classical times the terms _trans Alpes_ and _transalpinus_ always referred to Gaul, Germany, and regions north of the mountains, for these countries were beyond the Alps as viewed from Italy. This usage was continued in the Middle Ages by writers who themselves dwelt north of the Alps, and we find in our period that Otto of Freising speaks of Germany as _trans Alpes_ and of Italy as _cis Alpes_.[1523] Ragewin, Otto’s continuator, wrote more avowedly from the Germanic point of view and on several occasions refers to Italy as _trans Alpes_.[1524]

“ALEMANNIA”

The name “Alemannia” as applied to the whole of Germany was also in use in our period, although in the opinion of Otto it ought not to have been so used. Otto says that the city of Turegum (Zurich) is situated on a lake from which the river Lemannus flows and that from this river the province of Swabia is sometimes called Alemannia. “From this circumstance, some have come to think that the whole Teutonic land is called ‘Alemannia,’ whereas this province only [i.e. Swabia] should be called Alemannia, and its inhabitants only should be spoken of as ‘Alemanni.’”[1525] The question of the true etymology of the word Alemanni is one that lies beyond our field.

GERMANY

Though the author of the _De imagine mundi_[1526] follows Isidore and classical tradition in dividing Germany into two parts, “Germania superior” and “Germania inferior,” in the description of this part of the world he departs from his usual slavish habit of copying the words of Isidore and actually gives us a little information derived from a later source or, perhaps, even representing the result of personal and original observation. “Germania superior,” he says, extends between the Danube and the Alps and westward to the Rhine. Called also Rhaetia, it is the land in which the Danube takes its rise (a river which, enlarged by the junction of sixty great streams, discharges its waters into the Pontic Sea through seven mouths, as does the Nile). Suevia (Swabia), Alemannia (so called from Lake Leman), and Noricum (or Bavaria), in which is the city of Ratisbon, are all parts of “Germania superior.” It would almost seem as if the author of the _De imagine mundi_ goes out of his way to mention Ratisbon, a fact that has been cited[1527] as evidence (very slender evidence, it is true) that he may have been a native of this city or was at least personally acquainted with Germany. He carefully refrained from placing Isidore’s marvelous bird with luminous plumage in the Hercynian Forest, but removed it to Hyrcania in Central Asia, which seems to show that he was skeptical about the possibility of such a bird being found in Germany.[1528] Yet, though less lacking in originality than other parts of the work, the chapters on Germany in the _De imagine mundi_ can hardly stand comparison with the information to be found in Otto of Freising’s _Gesta Friderici_ and in Gunther of Pairis’ _Ligurinus_, both of which bespeak undeniable personal familiarity with the country. We have already noticed Otto’s description of the local topography in the vicinity of Freising.[1529] Elsewhere he mentions such matters as the good hunting and fishing in the neighborhood of Worms, enjoyed by the Italian princes who came over the Alps to take part in a diet held there.[1530] This territory, he said, was divided by the Rhine, with Gaul on one bank and the confines of Germany on the other. On the Gallic side stood the Vosges and Ardennes; on the German, forests of considerable extent, which to Otto’s day retained their barbaric place names (“barbara adhuc nomina retinentes”). Godfrey of Viterbo[1531] also enlarges on the beauties of the region about Worms, the wealth and numbers of its population, the fields and the fish-filled streams which water them, flowing down from wooded places.

Gunther’s description of the Main, Rhine, and Moselle country show that he probably was better acquainted with this district than with any of the other territories described in his poem.[1532] He cites, among specific details concerning Mayence, the fact that the city is situated on the Rhine a few leagues below the junction of the Main with that stream and not at the junction, as had usually been stated previously.[1533]

Hildegard of Bingen includes in her _Subtilitates_[1534] remarks about the rivers of her native country, with cautions regarding their use. Her introductory statement in this connection, that the sea sends forth rivers by which the land is irrigated as is the human body by the blood in the veins, should be interpreted in the sense we have already explained in Chapter VIII.[1535] She writes of the Seh (possibly the Selz, a stream that flows into the Rhine near Bingen), Rhine, Main, Danube, Moselle, Glan, Nahe, and other rivers, repeating in each case the assertion that the river arises from the sea. The bed of the Seh and its sands, she says, are polluted like a swamp because the stream rises and falls with the storms. Its waters should not be taken raw, nor even cooked in food, for, since they come from the foam of the sea, they are bad for the digestion and generally unsanitary. The Rhine is clear and flows through sandy country; but its water, when drunk unboiled, causes noxious blue fluids in the body. The sands of the Danube are clean and beautiful, its waters clear and harsh but not very good for drinking; the waters of the Main are insipid (_pinguis_); those of the Moselle light and transparent; and so on.

We find in the German chronicles of the time of the Crusades and of the century immediately preceding, some detailed notices about the northern parts of Germany and the shores of the Baltic not to be found in earlier works. In the middle of the eleventh century Adam of Bremen had described Saxony as a generally flat, low region of roughly triangular shape, lying between the lower Elbe and Rhine.[1536] The rivers Elbe and Oder, he said, rise near each other in the forested mountains of Moravia but flow off in opposite directions, the former to the northern sea, the latter to the Scythian swamp, or Baltic.[1537] Saxo Grammaticus in the geographical introduction to his _Gesta Danorum_ gives some fairly full remarks on the configuration of the German Baltic coast and on the peninsulas and islands of Denmark. The latter country, he says, is so intersected and broken by arms and channels of the sea that it contains few continuous tracts of land of any great size.[1538] Frisia Minor, adjacent to Denmark, is so low that it is often swept by violent storms and inundations which ruin the fields and destroy the houses.[1539]

BALTIC REGIONS

Adam of Bremen’s foremost interest was not Germany, however, but the Scandinavian North and the wilder and little-known lands beyond the Elbe, into which the frontier of Teutonic civilization was at this time gradually being pushed eastward. Adam mentions Jumna,[1540] at the mouth of the Oder, a great commercial city and gathering place of heathens and Greeks, and adds that according to some authorities Jumna was the largest city in Europe.[1541] Farther east lay various nations of Slavonia—Pomeranians and Prussians—and beyond them other “islands,” Samland, Kurland, and “Ehstland” (Esthonia), peopled by heathens. Traveling still more remotely in this direction one came to Russia and the fabulous regions of the North. Adam speaks well of the Prussians,[1542] for though heathen, he said, they were good men, ready to come to the aid of ships beset by pirates or in danger from the sea. Blue-eyed, with red skins and thick hair, eaters of horseflesh and drinkers of mare’s blood, they dwell in the midst of almost impenetrable swamps. Helmold, a chronicler of the twelfth century, copies extensively from Adam but adds many details regarding the religion and customs of the Slavs and, in particular, describes their worship of a great idol of the God Svantevith.[1543]

Saxo Grammaticus was better informed than Adam on the countries bordering upon the southern and southeastern coasts of the Baltic, and about them he supplies more or less extensive details.[1544] Though the Greeks and Romans alike had believed that on the north of Germany lies the ocean, in the midst of which are various islands—including Scandia and Scandinavia, about which little was known—they certainly had no adequate conception of the peninsular nature of Norway and Sweden. In the ninth century Einhard had described the Baltic as a bay, and Adam of Bremen quoted Einhard to this effect[1545] and it is also possible that Adam may have learned something of the Gulf of Bothnia.[1546] Adam, however, had no clear knowledge of the geography of this part of the world for “he speaks of the countries of the North as islands, and he seems to draw no sharp distinction between island and peninsula.”[1547] Saxo, on the other hand, writing over a century later, harbored no doubts whatever of the peninsular character of Scandinavia. He maintained that the sea swings around the north side of Norway and with constantly increasing breadth ends finally in a curved shore. This sea was here called by the ancients Gandvic (the White Sea). A narrow isthmus separates Gandvic from the sea to the south (the Baltic), and if the isthmus did not exist, Saxo said, Norway and Sweden would be an island.[1548]

SCANDINAVIA