Chapter XIII: Conclusion

It now remains for us to give a brief résumé of the outstanding elements which constituted the geographical lore of the time of the Crusades and to draw a few generalizations from the mass of details that have been set forth in the foregoing pages.

THE OUTSTANDING ELEMENTS OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL LORE OF THE TIME OF THE
CRUSADES

The dangers of attempting to condense the geographical thought of a century and a half into the compass of a few pages are manifest, and yet some of the more significant ideas may perhaps be presented without running an undue risk of over-simplification.

According to the orthodox view of the ecclesiastics, the world was created by an arbitrary act of God at a certain definite point of time. Under the influence of classical thought, writers of the Chartres group of the early twelfth century worked out theories of the Creation according to which, though the initiative was attributed to God’s act, the actual Works of the Six Days were ascribed to the unfolding of physical processes governed by the laws of nature. Such theories did not meet with general acceptance, though they were never wholly lost sight of. The ancient belief in an eternally existent, periodically re-formed universe was not given credence, though it was well known to the readers of the period with which we are concerned through classical works in their libraries and through translations from the Arabic.

It was probably the opinion of most scholars that the universe is a sphere in which the four elements are arranged concentrically. Furthermore, nearly all scholars argued that the earth likewise is a sphere and that they were acquainted with convincing proofs of this. Standing immobile in the center of the universe, the earth was usually supposed to be a small body in proportion to the entire cosmos. The surface of our globe was divided into five zones, two temperate, two polar—uninhabitable on account of the intense cold—and an equatorial zone, uninhabitable by reason of heat. The habitability of the equatorial zone, however, was affirmed by a few writers conversant with Arabic literature.

There was a great deal of speculation regarding the characteristics of those parts of the world which lay beyond the _oikoumene_, or quarter of the globe known to Europeans. The theories of Macrobius and of Martianus Capella, who had divided the earth’s surface into four equal parts by two encircling bands of ocean, strongly influenced the thought of many. Macrobius and Martianus Capella had also believed that all of these quarters of the earth were inhabited but that three of them were unknown to members of our human race, who could not visit them owing to the heat of the equatorial zone and the terrors of the ocean. Though this theory could not be reconciled with Christian teachings and was strongly controverted, it nevertheless persisted, and many of the writers of the Crusading age undoubtedly shared it.

Something was known of the atmosphere. William of Conches wrote of its decreased density and temperature with increased altitude. Rainfall was explained as the result of many causes, among them evaporation of sea water and condensation of water vapor in the air, and topographic influences on rainfall were recognized by Giraldus Cambrensis. The winds, defined as air in motion, were also occasionally ascribed to the influence of topography. William of Conches worked out an elaborate theory of a general circulation of the atmosphere produced by the circulation of ocean currents. The impressions made upon men by the climatic conditions of various parts of the earth found expression in many passages. The cold of the North was contrasted with the heat of the South, and Giraldus Cambrensis gives a colorful comparison of the damp climate of Ireland with the noxious dryness of the East.

The aqueous element was supposed to be divided into two parts, the waters above and the waters below the firmament. Theodoric of Chartres and William of Conches tried to explain the waters above the firmament on rational grounds; others were inclined to take the Biblical assertions absolutely literally. The waters below the firmament were believed to form one unit or congregation of waters, and an unceasing circulation was thought to be maintained from the seas and oceans through subterranean channels and cavities of the earth to the sources of streams. As to the seas themselves, many ingenious explanations were brought forward to account for their salinity. It was understood that the tides are caused by the moon, though subsidiary causes, such as whirlpools and ocean currents, were also adduced to explain them. The most interesting tidal studies of the period, made by Giraldus Cambrensis on the shores of the Irish Sea and Bristol Channel, were undoubtedly the results of careful synchronous observations of the times of high and low water in different localities. Something of the spirit of the North Atlantic is conveyed through the pages of the legend of St. Brandan. Of the waters of the lands, rainfall was not usually thought sufficient to account for the flow of rivers, which were supposed to be fed by underground channels from the seas. Springs, wells, and fountains attracted much attention, and many are the marvels related about them in the literature of the age. Giraldus Cambrensis describes marvelous lakes in Ireland, and strange tales were told of lakes of Italy, Spain, and elsewhere, which, together with the Dead Sea and volcanic craters, were objects of fear, because some men believed them to be ways of ingress to the infernal regions.

The lands of the earth’s surface were classified in various manners. The author of the _De imagine mundi_ mentions no less than six types of land surface. Different regions were supposed to have different effects on life: Ireland was thought to be remarkably healthful, and its earth to have the property of destroying venomous reptiles; the East, Giraldus Cambrensis would have us believe, is a fountain of poisons. Many medieval writers had an eye for the spiritual and esthetic beauties of landscape, and picturesque descriptions of rich cultivated scenes are not rare. It is doubtful, however, to what extent the grandeur of wild nature and of mountains was appreciated. The great majority of men certainly regarded mountains as grim and horrible. Mountain climbing was not indulged in for pleasure, though we have an account of an ascent of Etna in the _Image du monde_. On the other hand, there date from this age several extremely vivid descriptions of the hardships encountered during journeys over the Alps, one of which was made in midwinter. Alfred of Sareshel gives in a translation from the Arabic a clear account of geologic processes by which mountains were formed. Volcanoes impressed the men of the Middle Ages. The volcanic regions of southern Italy and Sicily and of Iceland are frequently described, and St. Brandan’s legend contains what can be nothing else than an account of a volcanic isle. Fiery mountains were associated in the popular mind with entrances to Hell. Scientific investigators usually attributed their fires to burning beds of sulphur and bitumen within the mountains or else to the outbursting of imprisoned winds. To the action of winds in subterranean caverns classical authorities had ascribed the cause of earthquakes, and this view was accepted throughout the Middle Ages. Other features of the land that attracted attention were the deserts of the East, vividly described by the historians of the Crusades and in the _Letter of Prester John_, and the fabulous islands of the sea, especially of the unknown Atlantic. Some peculiarities of the movement of ice in glaciers were noted by Saxo Grammaticus.

The influence of geographical environment on animals and on man was sometimes commented upon. Bernard Sylvester emphasizes the control of terrain over plant and animal life. Giraldus Cambrensis attributes the independence and audacity of the Welsh to the rugged character of their country. A fatalistic idea is expressed in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor and of Otto of Freising, to the effect that the course of science, empire, and civilization proceeds with the heavenly bodies across the surface of the earth from east to west and that, as it has reached the uttermost confines of the West, the power of the kingdom of the Franks is soon destined to disappear.

Within the field of astronomical geography several methods were known whereby latitudes may be determined, and also the use of observations of eclipses for ascertaining longitude was understood. Figures indicating the positions of points in many parts of the known world had been introduced to Western knowledge through the Moslems. It seems likely, furthermore, that not only were the Arabic figures borrowed by the astrological writers of our age but also that a new series of observations was made by which the latitudes as well as the longitudes of several stations in Western Europe were found with no small degree of accuracy. These figures, however, were intended to serve as aids for astrologers and astronomers in making their calculations, and we have no evidence that they were put to geographical use.

The cartography shows little originality. It was in no way corrected or checked up with reference to astronomical observations. Most of the maps were based on earlier models, and it is perhaps possible to trace their origins back to maps of the Roman Empire. Cartographic accuracy was not the aim of the map maker of the time, and we are not justified in criticizing his maps in the light of modern standards. They should be regarded rather as diagrammatic approximations. A number of conventions were followed, the most important of which was the representation of the east at the top. The maps were vividly colored; and mountains, rivers, and the works of man were shown by pictorial symbols.

We may conceive of the regional geographic knowledge of the age as comprised within two concentric circles: a very broad outer circle, which includes all those lands of which knowledge had been derived at second hand through literary sources; and a smaller inner circle including those lands which were known at first hand through actual travel.

The outer circle took in to the east the land of the Seres, or China, and the lost Atlantis to the west; to the north the regions of the Hyperboreans and the semi-mythical Rhipaean Mountains; and to the south the Mons Climax of Ptolemy and the mysterious upper reaches of the Nile. Nearly all that lies between the two circles was a vague region of fancy and fable, though ideas that were more or less correct prevailed about some parts of Western Asia, familiar ground to the men of ancient Greece and Rome.

The inner circle included on the east the shores of the Black Sea and the Holy Land; on the south, the Mediterranean fringe of Africa; westward it was bounded by the Atlantic coast; north-westward, warped somewhat out of shape, it enclosed Iceland and even the icy coasts of Greenland. To the north, it ran through Scandinavia and the Baltic. Within these bounds there were many gaps that were still utterly unknown; but, in general, politics, pilgrimage, war, and commerce had familiarized the men of the West with most parts of this tract. It seems a small area indeed compared with what is now known of the world’s surface and small even compared with what Ptolemy and earlier Greeks had known. Only in the age that immediately follows ours was the circle enlarged, at first to the eastward by the great overland journeys of Marco Polo and the other Asiatic travelers of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and then westward, southward, and northward during the Age of Discovery. Not until our own day has it at last come to comprise the entire earth.

CHARACTER OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL LORE OF THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES

Men have always respected tradition and learning inherited from former ages, but in some periods dependence on earlier authority has been more unquestioning than in others. In the Middle Ages, especially, an immense mass of knowledge and belief was handed down from generation to generation.

A portion of this inherited mass of knowledge and belief constituted the recognized and orthodox geographical lore of the Crusading age. This body of teachings—to be sure, not altogether uniform or consistent—had been built largely on a foundation of Biblical and classical doctrine. The early Church Fathers, taking the Bible as their authority, had leveled destructive criticism against those ideas of the Greeks and Romans which appeared to go counter to Scriptural texts, but in the course of time reconciliation of ancient science with Christianity was partly achieved and, as a consequence, the accepted scientific lore of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was only to a limited extent drawn from a literal interpretation of the Bible. Nevertheless, those theories of antiquity that were too diametrically hostile to the words of Scripture still remained tabooed, and, when Manegold, Peter Lombard, or Peter Comestor inveighed against belief in _hyle_, the Great Year, or the antipodes, they were merely echoing the arguments of their early Christian predecessors. Classical learning and Christian doctrine were sufficiently at one by the opening of the twelfth century to make it no longer heretical to believe in the sphericity of the earth, in the existence of antipodal regions (if not inhabitants), and in a physical explanation of many geographical processes that an earlier age might have ascribed to the direct intervention of the divine will.

The works of our period show all too plainly that they were written in a credulous age, for credulity is an inevitable concomitant of the undue respect for authority. Credulity and love of the marvelous—which is much the same thing—are in many ways the most characteristic and entertaining qualities of the geographical writers of the Middle Ages. Marvels of all kinds, located in all countries, are solemnly described as if they were truth. India, especially, was the scene of fabulous monsters and prodigies; but no country, no matter how well known, was wholly without them. Even the most serious writers mention them, and they enliven all the maps.

In contrast with this geography based on authority and tradition stood another great body of geographical lore derived not from books or tradition but from observation by eyewitnesses of the countries of the earth and the physical features of its surface. We may style this second body of geographical lore the “geography of observation.” It is represented almost universally in the literature of the period, for no writer was so completely immersed in the learning of the past that he failed altogether to respond to the world of his day. Even in the most learned works there are occasional passages drawn from contemporary observation; but it is especially in histories, chronicles, letters, and other less formal writings that the “geography of observation” finds unhampered expression. The latter are among the most illuminating documents of the age, for they reveal to us those things which above all interested the average man in the material world around him.

Measured by modern standards, this “geography of observation” is the only kind of geography that rests on a sound and scientific footing. Modern science rejects theories, however old and hallowed they may be, which cannot stand the test of an appeal to Nature herself. Precisely the opposite seems to have been the normal intellectual habit of the Middle Ages, when the prevailing tendency was if anything to put aside the evidence of Nature when contradicted by the classics, by the Church Fathers, or especially by the Bible. Logical impossibility or rational improbability did not usually bear much weight against a belief that had been approved by time.

And yet there were in the age of the Crusades numerous exceptions to this general rule. Never has there been a time when a few fore-reaching and individualistic spirits have not tried to search and see and think for themselves, to confront older teachings with new, to criticize established beliefs in the light of observed facts and reason. In the ardent, enthusiastic society of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was no lack of such spirits. Among the writers on geographical subjects we need but recall the names of the scholars of Chartres: Theodoric, who undertook to explain the Creation according to physical principles and specifically excluded from his discussion all moral and allegorical interpretations of the text of Genesis; or William of Conches, who argued that we may avoid irrational deductions from Scripture by an appeal to our own reason and who maintained that the animals of the earth and also Adam and Eve were produced through the interaction of the elements of fire, earth, air, and water. And this critical, inventive attitude reappears in the thirteenth century in the work of such men as Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, and even Albertus Magnus.

We gain a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of the devious workings of the human mind when we trace in the geographical lore of the Middle Ages the persistence of old ideas and the transfer of prejudices and beliefs from age to age; but at best this is a disheartening study. On the other hand, there is always fascination in coming across oases of fresh observation and clear reason in the midst of the arid deserts of plagiarism that constitute so much of medieval literature. These oases mark the pathway of the history of science.

NOTES

NOTES

The numbers at the top of the inner margin of each page indicate on which pages of the text (pp. 1–361) the passages occur to which the notes on a given page refer.

For the works here cited in abbreviated form refer to the Bibliography. Works not listed in the Bibliography (these are relatively few) are here given with their full titles.

As a rule a work will be found in the Bibliography under its own author or, if anonymous, its own title. If not, the entry under which it will be found is generally here indicated. In the few cases where it is not the work should be looked for under the ancient or medieval author or title to which the work sought for relates.

Bible references and quotations throughout the present work, except where otherwise indicated, are based on the Douay and Rheims translation of the Vulgate.

NOTES