country comes that great river the problem of whose sources has puzzled
mankind from the earliest ages down nearly to our own day. In classical
times three theories had prevailed concerning the headwaters of the
Nile.[1426] The correct theory, that of Eratosthenes and of Ptolemy,
that the river rises in Ethiopia itself but far to the south, met with
no recognition in our period. The second theory placed the sources in
India and was closely allied with the very old belief that tended to
confuse Ethiopia itself with India and can be traced back to Homeric or
even pre-Homeric times.[1427] The third theory, which probably
originated in vague rumors that reached the Carthaginians and later the
Romans and still later the Moslems, of the eastward-flowing course of a
great river south of the Sahara (a river which we now know to be the
Niger), placed the headwaters of the Nile either in a great lake or else
in the Atlas Mountains in western Africa close to the ocean.
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
Adam of Bremen enjoyed peculiar opportunities for gathering information
about the lands immediately to the north of Denmark through his
association with archbishop Adalbert of Bremen.[1549] Beyond Denmark, he
wrote, a new world was opened up. Norway, he believed, extended
northward to the limits of the known world, to the Rhipaean
Mountains.[1550] Through a second of his patrons, King Svend Estridsson
of Denmark, who had spent no less than twelve years in these parts, Adam
was enabled to learn something of the remote land of Sweden: a rich
country, the principal towns of which were Birka and Upsala, the latter
possessing a heathen temple, the scene of human sacrifices. Northward of
Sweden were regions inhabited by tribes of Finns of marvelous swiftness
of foot. These so-called “Finns”—probably in reality Lapps—are
frequently mentioned in medieval literature on Scandinavia and the
North.[1551] They are sometimes called “Scritefinns,” “Skritofinns,” or
“Skridfinns.” Saxo Grammaticus spoke of them as great hunters who can
climb over the rocky crags of the mountains to the very summits.[1552]
In the _Historia Norwegiae_ we are told that they “fasten smoothed
pieces of wood [literally, balks, stakes] under their feet, which
appliances they call ‘ondrer,’ and, while the deer [i.e. reindeer]
gallop along carrying their wives and children over the deep snow and
precipitous mountains, they dash on more swiftly than the birds”
(Nansen’s translation).[1553] Here we have one of the earliest accounts
of the use of skis.
Beyond the Finns Adam of Bremen placed the realm of fable that encircled
the medieval world,[1554] where were to be found a race of dwarfs and
bearded women inhabiting the Rhipaean Mountains; where were also
Amazons, Cyclopes, and monsters like those which other writers of our
age placed in the heart of Asia or of Africa.
Adam of Bremen, Saxo Grammaticus, and the author of the _Historia
Norwegiae_, though they included much that is fanciful in their
geographical chapters, also provided reliable data regarding the peoples
of the North. Ragewin, on the other hand, in the continuation of the
_Gesta Friderici_, and Gunther of Pairis give an account which
undoubtedly represented a more usual idea of these people in the minds
of Western Europeans. These northern folk aroused Ragewin’s disgust,
for, he said, they devour each other in time of famine. Owing to
perpetual frosts, agriculture is impossible in their country, and their
lives consequently are given over to hunting and killing. Well versed in
the arts of piracy, these treacherous tribes infest the shores and isles
of the ocean, Hibernia, Britain, Denmark, and other coasts.[1555]
Gunther in the _Ligurinus_[1556] enlarges and amplifies this
uncomplimentary description by drawing on his own imagination. He says
that the inhabitants of the isles of the “Scythian Sea” are strong in
the arm but weak in the head. They neither plow a soil made sterile by
the perpetual cold nor harrow their uncultivated fields. Neither do they
couple the vine to the elm, nor gather in the fruits of the trees,
autumn’s gifts, but seek their food by the chase and by frequent forays
and grow old in piracy on the tireless waves of the sea. And when long
privation aggravates a famine—horrible to relate and scarce to be
believed, though report would have it so!—these miserable creatures bite
and lacerate their own limbs. Father does not know enough to spare his
son, nor brother his brother, and the daughter finds refreshment by
devouring the boiled body of her mother!
We certainly must not take this effusion as a literally exact account of
the customs of the Scandinavians at a time when they were far from being
sunk in the abject state of savagery which Gunther pictures; but it
shows the terror which the Vikings had instilled into the consciousness
of Europe and also the very vague and hazy kind of reports which an
intelligent German of the twelfth century received in regard to regions
not very distant from his home. Furthermore, it is not at all improbable
that the story of cannibalism among these people may have arisen from an
actually existing practice of human sacrifice coupled with cannibalistic
rites at an earlier date.[1557]
FRANCE
Otto of Freising regarded the Rhine as the boundary between Germany and
Gaul. Though he had studied at Paris, he used Orosius as the main source
for the description of Gaul in his _Chronicon_[1558] and discussed the
various parts of this country and the proper manner in which it ought to
be subdivided in a way that reminds us of Caesar. Authorities, he said,
declare that there are two main subdivisions; Gallia Cisalpina and
Gallia Transalpina. The former lies in Italy between the Po and the
Alps; the latter—our France—in turn may be divided into three parts (the
three parts made famous by Caesar), Belgian, Lugdunensian, and
Aquitanian. Otto then proceeds to a dry and technical discussion of how
these parts should be properly grouped in relation to an ill-defined
Celtic Gaul.
_Paris_
More full of color than the pedantic discussion of Otto is a picturesque
description of the Paris of the last half of the twelfth century in one
of the letters of Guy of Bazoches.[1559] “The city,” Guy writes, “lies
in the lap of a delightful valley crowned on both sides by hills which
Ceres and Bacchus make beautiful, striving with one another in their
eagerness. The Seine, by no means a humble stream among a host of
rivers, takes its rise in the east and in mid-course divides its proud
current into two branches, thus making an island out of the center of
the city. Two suburbs stretch forth on either side, and even the lesser
of these arouses the envy of many an envious town which it surpasses.
Connecting each suburb with the island is a bridge of stone, the name of
which is derived from the amount of traffic that falls to its lot. The
bridge facing the north, the sea, and England is styled the ‘great
bridge’ and the one which faces the Loire on the opposite side is called
the ‘little bridge.’” The so-called great bridge—
“Densely crowded with a wealthy, bargaining throng,
· · · · ·
Swarms with boats, groans under riches, overflows
With merchandise: for lo! there is nowhere its equal!”
The little bridge, on the other hand, is given over to walkers,
strollers, and disputers of logic. On the narrow strip of land that
forms the island the royal palace towers up to lofty heights and
audaciously overlooks with its shoulders the roofs of the whole city.
Reverence for it is commanded not so much by the marvelous structure of
the building as by the noble authority of its rule.
“This is that house, the glory of the Franks, whose
Praises the eternal centuries will sing.
This is that house which holds in its power
Gaul mighty in war, Flanders magnificent in wealth.
This is that house whose scepter the Burgundian,
Whose mandate the Norman, and whose arms the Briton fears.”
The description of Paris closes with a tribute to the island, from
ancient times the home of philosophy and of the seven sisters—the
liberal arts.
_Alsace_
Godfrey of Viterbo seems to have known something of Alsace, whose
attractions and beauties he highly praised.[1560] The Rhine, he said, is
enlivened with shipping. Flowing into Alsace from Basel it laves with
its waters wide fields through varied stretches of landscape and
traverses a rich countryside. To cross this region takes a traveler
three beautiful days’ journey, and such vineyards as flourish there the
poet sees nowhere else in the world, and the grainfields are marvelous
in their fertility. It is a land that can be aptly compared with
“Liguria” (Lombardy), for in like manner it is naturally defended by
rivers and mountains. The Lord, in his special love for Alsace, had made
its plain stand preëminent in beauty among the plains of the world. The
population is extremely numerous, and so great are the riches of the
people that England and Denmark look thither for markets. Dominating the
whole country is the city of Argentina (Strasburg), through which flows
the river Ill, rushing to pour forth its water into the Rhine.
_Southern France_
We find various passages in the _Otia imperialia_ of Gervase of Tilbury
revealing his familiarity with the south of France. On two different
occasions Gervase speaks of the three mouths of the Rhone, which enclose
the Sucades (or Sicades) Islands, “commonly called the Camargae.”[1561]
The earth here is rich in salt of a high quality, and the region as a
whole is incomparable for its sea and pond fishing, for the hunting of
game and birds, and for its pastures.[1562] Orosius[1563] and
Isidore[1564] had mentioned the Sicades, undoubtedly having in mind the
Stoechades of the ancient geographers, or what are now either the Iles
d’Hyères or else, possibly, the small islets just outside the harbor of
Marseilles. Gervase, on the other hand, identifies them undeniably with
the flat alluvial islands of the Rhone delta, the largest of which is
now called Camargue, as in Gervase’s day. He also mentions the famous
church of Saints Martha and Mary Magdalene on this isle, then, as at
present, a much frequented shrine of pilgrimage.[1565]
Gervase knew something of the Narbonnese.[1566] On the authority of the
_De imagine mundi_[1567] he states that this province was called
_togata_ because of the length of the togas worn there, but adds that
the description was no longer apt, because in his time the natives wore
shorter garments.
Concerning Provence, Gervase made observations intended to impress on
the Emperor Otto some idea of the strategic importance of this territory
to his empire.[1568] We have here an example of medieval political and
strategic geography, based in this case not on classical authority but
on what the writer actually had observed and thought. The argument,
curiously enough, arose out of the discussion we have already
mentioned[1569] of the effects of the _mistral_ on the character of the
people of the lower Rhone valley. Gervase concluded that not only does
the atmosphere exert an influence on everything upon which it bears down
but also that every weight, whether material or spiritual, affects in
some manner the objects upon which it rests. This led him to warn Otto
that it would be advisable to moderate his _imperium_ over Provence in
order to propitiate the people. This should be done because the
strategic position of that country—the old Kingdom of Arles—is of such
nature that it might prove either a great menace or else a great benefit
to the unity of the empire. Though admirably situated to threaten
France, Gervase explained that Provence is subject to easy invasion by
land from Spain, by sea from Africa, or across the Alpine passes from
Italy. The character of the people, furthermore, makes it particularly
important that they should be handled with circumspection. The
Provençaux are shrewd in council and effective in whatever enterprise
they undertake but false to their promises and without military
strength; owing to their poverty largely dependent on charity (_pro sua
paupertate in cibando larga_); insidious in crime (_nocenda_); but calm
in the face of trouble. If they have a stable ruler whom they honor, no
race is more quickly turned by good impulses, but no other race is more
prone to evil when not blessed by such a ruler. In addition, their land
is worth holding for its own sake, fruitful as it is above all countries
in its seas, fish, meats, and all kinds of hunting, precious stones,
swamps, lakes, mountains, rivers, springs and groves, and delicious in
its woods and pastures.[1570]
_ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN_
The Romans had discovered the Canary and Madeira groups and, owing to
the mild climate and favorable conditions, had associated them with the
“Islands of the Blest” of Greek mythology and hence had come to call
them the “Fortunate Isles.” In the Middle Ages these isles passed again
into the realm of the unknown, though their memory lingered on to adorn
the Western Ocean on the Beatus maps, together with more fabulous isles
and to serve as the datum point for the western prime meridian. The Cape
Verde group and the Azores were utterly unknown.
On most of the maps of the world of our period the islands are
arbitrarily squeezed within narrow confines of the encircling ocean, and
no attempt is made to represent them in their relative positions or to
indicate their distinctive shapes. On the St. Sever Beatus map[1571] all
islands are shaped like sausages (see Fig. 2, p. 69, above), whether in
the Mediterranean or in the ocean. Ireland lies off the coast of Spain
and is designated as “Insula Hibernia ab Scotorum gentibus colitur;”
Britain, separated from the coasts of Frisia, Gaul, Aquitania, and
Gascony by an “Oceanus Britannicus,” is said to be 800 miles long by 200
broad—figures taken from Orosius,[1572] who got them from Pliny.[1573]
Five cities are equally spaced from north to south, London, Lincoln,
Wroxeter, Seaton, and “Condeaco” (?). Indeed, among the maps of the
world the only one which represents the British Isles in recognizable
outline is the Cotton,[1574] and this probably dates from long before
our period. Here we may note, in pleasing contrast to the absurdities we
find elsewhere, such features as the westward extension of Cornwall and
Devon and of Scotland; Ireland in its correct position and approximately
its correct size; the Orkneys to the north of Scotland, and even Man and
the Scilly Isles.
BRITISH ISLES
The medieval reader of the _De imagine mundi_ could certainly have
gained no very accurate impression from the chapter devoted to the
British Isles. This is worth translation in order to demonstrate the
utter futility and antiquated character of this much-quoted and at one
time, perhaps, unduly popular work:[1575]
“Over against Spain toward the setting sun are the following islands in
the ocean: Britain, England, Hibernia, Thanet—the earth of which,
wherever it may be carried, will destroy serpents—the thirty-three
Orkneys on the Arctic Circle where the solstice occurs, Scotia and Chile
(Thule)....” This is all the _De imagine mundi_ tells us of the British
Isles!
For more ample data we must look to such native authorities as Giraldus
Cambrensis, Alexander Neckam, Gervase of Tilbury, Matthew Paris, and the
various British historians and chroniclers.
Gervase of Tilbury adds some details from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the
brief notices which he took from Orosius on the dimensions of Britannia
Major.[1576] His account, though not thoroughly up-to-date in any sense
of the term, is fuller and less misleading than that of the _De imagine
mundi_; and we certainly do not gain from it any impression like the one
we derive from the latter work, that Britain, England, and Scotland are
three distinct islands. Geoffrey of Monmouth had told how Great
Britain—as distinguished from Britannia Minor, or Armorica (Brittany) on
the Gallic side of the Britannic sea—was divided in ancient times into
four parts: Cornwall (Cornubia) to the west; Cambria, called vulgarly
Wallia, to the north of this; Albania, called also Scotia, in the far
north; and Loegria, or Loegrino, called also Anglia, in the middle and
south; and that the rivers dividing these provinces were the Waja (Wye),
Sabrinus (Severn), Boecura (?), and Deia (Dee).
_Cities of Britain_
Alexander Neckam, in the _De laudibus divinae sapientiae_, also regales
us with a rambling poetical description of the marvels of Britain and of
its principal cities.[1577] Fame, he says, rejoices in placing Exeter
before all other cities: but as for himself he would give New Troy
(London) the first place, on account of its glory, wealth, customs,
charm, and situation. The walls of London, he adds, would be worthy to
hold a Helen. Among other famous cities he mentions Winchester, known in
early times for its wealth, and also Canterbury, York, Lincoln, Durham
(famous for its associations with the Venerable Bede), Gloucester,
Verolamia (St. Albans), where took place the martyrdom of St. Alban, and
Colchester. In the same poem Neckam discourses on the streams of England
and Ireland when discussing the principal rivers of the world.[1578] In
connection with the Thames, he retells the mythological story of the
founding of London. The Severn, he says, delights in the cities of
Worcester and Gloucester on its banks, and its waters are augmented by
those of the Usk. He points out that Britain contains several streams
named Avon besides the one upon which Bath stands; that the Trent sends
its fish to London; and that the Humber, unsafe for shipping on account
of its tides, disdains to see a city but flows through the open fields.
_Giraldus Cambrensis on Ireland and Wales_
Gervase of Tilbury and Alexander Neckam give us more or less hackneyed
and stereotyped descriptions of the British Isles. Far greater
originality is revealed in the works of Giraldus Cambrensis. In many
other connections we have spoken of the _Topographia Hiberniae_ and
_Descriptio Kambriae_, which are the most complete and satisfactory
geographical descriptions of limited regions dating from our period. The
introduction of a long series of fables into the treatise on Ireland
tends to blind us to the merits of those parts of the work that have
real scientific or historical value. In the beginning of the second
“Distinctio” of the _Topographia Hiberniae_, Giraldus says that, as the
prodigies of the East have long since been made familiar by the writings
of diligent authors, he proposes to throw some light on the prodigies of
the West. This he proceeds to do in a highly competent manner, wholly in
keeping with the style of Solinus, that master among the “diligent
authors” to whom he refers. The Englishman of the time who sat down with
Giraldus’ work on Ireland before him gathered from it quite as much
fabulous and fantastic lore as he could have gathered from the pages of
Solinus, but in this case it was lore of countries near at hand. It
would almost seem that Giraldus, like a novelist, deliberately set out
to throw a glamour of romance over familiar scenes and places. But,
however this may be, Giraldus, unlike his model, Solinus, was more than
a mere spinner of yarns. His works show that in many respects he was a
close and accurate, if not always critical, observer; and certainly he
had a vivid and lively interest in nature and mankind.
_Ireland_
Ireland, he writes, after Britain is the largest of islands. It lies one
rather short day’s journey to the west of Wales. Between Ulster and
Galloway in Scotland the intervening arm of the sea narrows to about
half its average width, and the promontories on either side can be seen
across the straits in clear weather. South of Ireland, at three days’
sailing, is Spain; and northward at an equal distance, Iceland, the
greatest of the northern isles.[1579] Cut off by the sea, Ireland is
almost like another world and contains many phenomena not found
elsewhere.[1580]
After discussing in detail various earlier theories about the dimensions
of Ireland—what Solinus, Orosius, Isidore, and Bede had
said[1581]—Giraldus proceeds to give some observations of his own on the
healthful qualities of the climate, the character of the terrain,[1582]
and the fertility[1583] and products of the soil. Ireland is a land full
of pastures and of rich meadows flowing with milk and honey; wine is
drunk there, but, as there are no vineyards, it has to be imported from
Poitou in exchange for ox-hides and the skins of other cattle and of
wild beasts. Owing to the presence of a certain poisonous wild yew tree
and also to the violence of the rainy winds, not nearly so many bees are
kept in Ireland as one would expect.[1584] Giraldus also remarks that
there are more lakes in Ireland than in any other country,[1585] a
statement which, though perhaps not true literally, shows that he was
aware of one of the differences, if not of the reasons for the
difference, between glaciated and nonglaciated countries. These lakes
and the rivers abound in fish, many of which are peculiar to the
island.[1586]
Giraldus gives a legendary account of the clearing of the Irish forests
in the days of Partholan,[1587] who was supposed to have come there only
three hundred years after the Deluge. At that time the whole
landscape—with the exception of a few mountains—was covered by an
immense forest; and even in his own time, Giraldus adds, the area under
cultivation was very restricted in comparison with the woodlands.
His attitude toward the Irish people is neither sympathetic nor
complimentary.[1588] A rude and inhospitable race, he says, they live
like beasts and have scarcely advanced beyond a primitive pastoral stage
of civilization. Their fields are used only to a limited extent for
pastures, even less for raising of flowers, and less still for the
sowing and cultivation of crops. What cultivated fields there are, are
very poor; but this condition is the fault of the farmers rather than
the result of defects in the soil, which is extremely fertile. There are
few fruit trees, the metallic veins of the country are not worked, and
there are neither manufacturing, trade, nor mechanical arts. But the
people are great musicians![1589]
We ought not to place too much faith in the accuracy of this account of
the Irish people. As Dimock points out in his introduction to the “Rolls
Series” edition of the _Topographia_, Giraldus’ acquaintance with them
was in all probability limited to a few clergy and to those elements of
the population who could still submit “to exist in degradation under the
grinding rule of the English invaders.”[1590] Giraldus was also
prejudiced by the feeling of contempt for a supposedly “inferior race”
which nearly always results from the conquest of one people by another.
Though his travels in Ireland were not extensive, the Welshman had
acquired a superficial and inexact acquaintance with the topographical
features of the island and, in particular, with its river systems.[1591]
The existence of nine principal rivers, he says, dates back to the
earliest times, although more recently other streams of no less size had
sprung into being. The Shannon is by far the most important. Rising in a
large and beautiful lake which divides Munster from Connaught, it
separates into two branches that run off in opposite directions. One
turns south and, forming the border between the two parts of Munster,
flows into “St. Brandan’s Sea.” The other divides Meath and Connaught
from Ulster and after a winding course debouches into the Northern
Ocean. The western quarter of the island is thus separated from the
other parts by this “mediterranean river” (_mediterraneum flumen_) from
sea to sea. Giraldus was accused in the seventeenth century by a violent
Irishman[1592] of either “raving or dreaming” when he made the Shannon
divide Ulster from Connaught. It has nevertheless been shown that,
though the Welshman’s hydrographic theories were false, there was some
justification for his mistaken statements. Certainly, from very near the
headwaters of the Shannon other rivers flow away to the north, and a
hasty observer might easily have believed them to arise from the same
source.[1593]
_Wales_
Giraldus was far better acquainted with his native country, Wales, about
which his two treatises give us much accurate information regarding the
mountain ranges and river systems, the types of terrain, and the
character and customs of the people. He brings out the contrast between
North and South Wales.[1594] South Wales, he says, is pleasanter by
reason of its flat plains, but North Wales is stronger in its defenses,
more productive of powerful men, and also more fertile. Merioneth,
however, and the land of Canani are the roughest and most inaccessible
of all parts of Wales.[1595] The Welsh people dwell for the most part in
sequestered isolation and not in cities, villages, or castles.[1596]
Their houses are of the simplest construction. They possess neither
gardens nor orchards, and the land is little used for aught else than
pasturage. The inequalities and natural defensive strength of the ground
make Wales a very difficult region to conquer.
The character of the topographic detail which Giraldus gives reveals his
extensive personal acquaintance with the country. We have already had
occasion to mention[1597] his graphic description of the mountains
around the Lake of Brecknock, of the valley of Ewyas, of the quicksands
and submerged forests along the southern coast, and of the pasturage on
Snowdon. His knowledge of the Welsh rivers (Severn, Wye, Usk, Dee), the
mountains in which they take their source, and their courses seaward was
far more accurate than his knowledge of the streams of Ireland.
Certainly among the works of our period there is none that vies with the
_Descriptio Kambriae_ either in richness and correctness of detail or in
vividness of presentation.
We must say a few words about a chapter which Giraldus introduces on the
dialects spoken in Wales,[1598] the only discussion of linguistic
geography that the writer has found in the literature of the time.[1599]
The Welshman points out that the British tongue spoken in North Wales is
more delicate, beautiful, and generally more praiseworthy than that
spoken elsewhere, because this region had been subjected to the
intermixture of foreign peoples. The speech of Cardiganshire, however,
though this province lies in the heart of South Wales, was also said to
be very distinguished and praiseworthy. The natives of Cornwall and
Brittany made use of tongues much alike and nearly always comprehensible
to the Welsh, because originally the language of all these people was
the same. Cornish and Breton, however, in so far as they were more
lacking in delicacy and form than Welsh, approached more closely to the
ancient British idiom. Similarly the English spoken in southern England,
and especially in Devonshire, seemed to Giraldus to be far less correct
and more archaic than the tongue of the northern parts of the island,
which had been modified by the incursions of the Danes and Northmen. We
thus see that Giraldus was broad-minded enough to grant that a language
could be materially enriched by contact with alien speech and by the
infusion of foreign expressions.
_William Fitzstephen on London_
Any discussion of the medieval geographical lore of the British Isles
would be inadequate without some mention of a famous account of London
that forms part of the preface of William Fitzstephen’s life of Thomas à
Becket.[1600] The highly colored picture that William draws surpasses in
superlatives Guy of Bazoches’ contemporary description of Paris.[1601]
Even in the twelfth century local pride might lead to the innocent
exaggeration of merit. William tells us that “among the noble cities of
the world celebrated by Fame, the city of London in the kingdom of the
English is the one seat that pours out its fame more widely, sends to
farther lands its wealth and trade, lifts its head higher than the
rest.” He goes on to specify how fortunate is London in its mild
climate, piety, fortifications, site, manners and customs, and the
character of its citizens. London’s piety is shown by the presence not
only of an episcopal church but of no less than thirteen “larger
conventual churches besides one hundred and twenty-six lesser parish
churches.” “Above all other citizens,” he says, “the citizens of London
are regarded as conspicuous and noteworthy for handsomeness of manners
and of dress, at table and in the way of speaking. The city matrons are
true Sabine women.” The city is very well organized so that the
different businesses are distributed in different quarters. In the
suburbs are “spacious and beautiful gardens” “planted with trees.” To
the north lie pastures and meadowland with streams flowing through them,
“where the turning wheels of mills are put in motion with a cheerful
sound.” “The tilled lands of the city are not barren gravel but fat
plains of Asia that make crops luxuriant and fill their tillers’ barns
with Ceres’ sheaves.” Nevertheless “very near lies a great forest with
woodland pasture, coverts of wild animals, stags, fallow deer, boars,
and wild bulls” (Morley’s translation).[1602] In the long account of the
sports of the London youth with which William Fitzstephen closes we see
that even at this early period the English were devoted to outdoor
athletics and games. Besides shows and cockfights we are told in detail
of ball games, gymnastics, wrestling, dancing, and more strenuous
horseback exercises, sham battles, tourneys, and combats in the water
with lances. In winter, when the “great fen or moor which waters the
walls of the city on the north side” was frozen, boys and girls engaged
in sports upon the ice. Nor were young people alone interested in
athletics, for in the twelfth, as in the twentieth century, “the ancient
and wealthy men of the town came forth to see the sport of the young men
and to take part of the pleasure in beholding their agility” (Stow’s
translation).[1603]
_Matthew Paris’ Maps of Britain_
If Giraldus Cambrensis’ treatises are the best descriptions of regional
geography in the literature of our period, the best regional maps were
also the work of a native of the British Isles. In their relative
accuracy and fullness of detail, as well as in their freedom from
servile dependence on acknowledged authorities, Matthew Paris’ three
maps of Britain occupy a place by themselves in medieval cartography. By
far the best way to gain an idea of what they are like is to examine
them in reproduction[1604] (one herewith in Fig. 9). It will not be
amiss, however, to point out a few significant details.
[Illustration:
FIG. 9—One of the three maps of Britain by Matthew Paris, that on
London Codex Claud. D VI, folio 8 vo. (From Miller, _Mappaemundi_,
vol. iii, 1895, fig. 23).
]
On one map a legend in the middle informs us that “Britain, which
includes Scotia, Galloway, and Wales, is now called England.”[1605]
Another legend on a different map gives the dimensions (800 miles in
length from St. Michael in Cornwall to Caithness, and 300 miles from St.
David’s to Dover)[1606] and says that there are two archiepiscopal and
thirty-two episcopal sees. The outlines of the coasts are in general
admirably shown, especially the west coast, with the westward-reaching
promontories of Galloway, Wales, and Cornwall. The east coast is less
satisfactory, for neither the indentation of the Wash nor the broad
eastward projection of Norfolk appear, and by some confusion a point on
the coast of Suffolk is taken as the southeastern corner of Britain,
with the result that the Thames is shown as debouching into the English
Channel. In the far north, the sketchy outlines of Scotland show that
relatively little was known of this remote part of the island. Indeed,
on two of the maps the Firths of Clyde and Forth join in such a way as
to cut off “Scocia Ultramarina” from the remainder of Britain, with
which it is connected by a bridge (see Fig. 9). The courses of the main
rivers, Severn, Humber, Avon, Thames, on the whole are well delineated.
A large tract in the east is labeled _mariscus_ to designate the Fen
country, and the mountains Snowdon, Plynlimon, and Cheviot appear in
their correct positions.[1607] The northern Scottish Highlands are
described by long legends as mountainous and woody regions which
generate an uncultivated and pastoral people, inasmuch as a great part
of this area is boggy and full of reeds.[1608] Argyll is a “trackless
and watery district well adapted to cattle and pasturage,”[1609] and
South Wales is spoken of in much the same terms.[1610] Among the islands
off the coast we notice Sheppey, Thanet, Wight, possibly some of the
Channel Islands, Portland Head, Scilly, Lundy, Anglesey, Man, Tiree,
Iona, and, to the east of Scotland, the Orkneys.[1611] The Hebrides are
conspicuously absent, and in their place a legend reads “immense and
trackless sea.” A large number of cities are placed more or less in
their proper positions, together with the names of counties and other
territorial divisions; and finally the Roman walls from Forth to Clyde
and from Carlisle to Newcastle make the most prominent feature among the
works of man.
_Orkneys and Shetlands_
Returning to Giraldus, we find that among the islands in the
neighborhood of Britain he mentions Man, Mona (or Anglesey), the
Orkneys, and the Shetlands. Man, he remarks, should be considered as
belonging to Britain and not to Ireland. His criterion for so assigning
it was the fact that its earth does not resemble the earth of Ireland in
the property of killing venomous reptiles.[1612] The Orkneys and
Shetlands,[1613] in the northern ocean beyond Ulster and Galloway, were
subject to the Norwegian king, through whose piracy and prowess at sea
they were held in submission even though geographically they lay nearer
the coasts of other countries. Giraldus quotes Orosius and Isidore to
the effect that, of the thirty-three Orkneys, thirteen were inhabited
and twenty deserted, and he added that in his day, also, the greater
part of these isles were uninhabited.
ICELAND AND THULE
Giraldus writes of Iceland, three days’ sail to the north of Ireland,
and gives a few details regarding its people.[1614] The speech of the
Icelanders was brief and truthful and they rarely made oath; their king
was the equivalent of a priest; and government was in the hands of a
bishop. Though thunder and lightning were rare in this distant isle,
there was another curse far more terrible: volcanic eruptions and lava
flows.
Apparently Giraldus did not associate Iceland with the Thule of the
ancients, an isle which he was at a loss to identify.[1615] In regard to
the latter, he remarked that it was strange that this island, the nature
of which was so well known to the Orientals, should remain unknown to
the people of the West. After quoting what Solinus and Isidore had
written about it, he added that no island familiar to the men of the
Occident partook of the qualities which these writers attributed to
Thule and that consequently it must either be fabulous—as well as
famous, he naively remarks—or else hidden away in the far corners of the
Boreal Ocean under the Arctic Pole.
The Emperor Frederick II in his treatise on falconry says that the
gerfalcons come from a certain island between Norway and Gallandia
(Greenland) called in Teutonic “Islandia,” which may be translated as
“frozen” or “region of ice.”[1616]
_Iceland in Icelandic Literature_
Long prior to the beginning of our period Iceland had become the home of
an enterprising and cultivated Scandinavian people. From its shores
pilgrims found their way to Italy and the Holy Land, and navigators
sailed westward into the more mysterious recesses of the ocean. The
Sagas give us data regarding these voyages and incidentally throw light
on the geographical concepts in the minds of the Northern peoples
concerning the seas and islands of the North. The _Ílendingabók_ of Ari
Frodhi, dating from shortly after 1134, tells of the first Norse visit
to Iceland in 870 by Ingolf. Ari mentions it as significant that “at
that time Iceland was clothed with forest from the mountains to the
strand,” and that “there were Christian men here, whom the Norsemen
called Papar” (Nansen’s translation).[1617] It was supposed that these
men came from the British Isles because here were found Irish books,
bells, and crooks. In the _Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium_
of the monk Theodricus we are told that certain merchants in the time of
Harold Fairhair had sailed to the Faroes but were driven out to sea by
storms and came “to a far distant land, which some think to have been
the island of Thule; but I cannot either confirm or deny this, as I do
not know the true state of the matter. They landed and wandered far and
wide; but although they climbed mountains, they nowhere found trace of
human habitation” (Nansen’s translation).[1618] In the _Historia
Norwegiae_, dating probably from the thirteenth century, we are told
that “next, to the west, comes the great island which by the Italians is
called Ultima Tile; but now it is inhabited by a considerable multitude,
while formerly it was waste land, and unknown to men, until the time of
Harold Fairhair” (Nansen’s translation).[1619] In the _Landnámabók_, of
about 1200, we have a vivid account of the first Norwegian discoverers’
ascent of a high mountain in this remote land. They “looked around them,
whether they could see smoke or any sign that the land was inhabited,
and they saw nothing.... As they sailed from the land much snow fell
upon the mountains, and therefore they called the land Snowland”
(Nansen’s translation).[1620]
GREENLAND
Greenland had been discovered about the year 900. In our period the
southwestern coast had become the seat of two small settlements, the
ruins of which may be seen at the present time.[1621] The population was
not great (less than two thousand), and yet this far outpost of European
civilization was large enough to be constituted an independent bishopric
about the year 1110. From its settlements, certainly during and after
the thirteenth century and probably in the course of our period as well,
regular summer seal-hunting expeditions were made to the north along the
coast, perhaps as far as Baffin’s Bay. The icebound east coast of
Greenland, on the other hand, was avoided by the Scandinavian seafarers,
although we read of frequent shipwrecks there. There is also a report of
a seal-hunting trip to this coast made in 1129. From the mid-thirteenth
century dates the work called the _King’s Mirror_, which gives us a
vivid account of the ice floes and icebergs that beset the inhospitable
eastern shore.
“Now in that same sea [i.e. the Greenland Sea] there are yet many more
marvels, even though they cannot be accounted for by witchcraft
[skrimslum]. So soon as the greater part of the sea has been traversed,
there is found such a mass of ice as I know not the like of anywhere
else in the world. This ice [i.e. the ice-floes] is some of it as flat
as if it had frozen on the sea itself, four or five cubits thick, and
lies so far from land [i.e. from the east coast of Greenland] that men
may have four or five days’ journey across the ice [to land]. But this
ice lies off the land rather to the northeast (landnorr) or north than
to the south, southwest, or west; and therefore anyone wishing to make
the land should sail round it [i.e. round Cape Farewell] in a
southwesterly and westerly direction, until he is past the danger of
[encountering] all this ice, and then sail thence to land. But it has
constantly happened that men have tried to make the land too soon, and
so have been involved in these ice-floes; and some have perished in
them; but others again have got out, and we have seen some of these and
heard their tales and reports.... These ice-floes are strange in their
nature; sometimes they lie as still as might be expected, separated by
creeks or large fjords; but sometimes they move with as great rapidity
as a ship with a fair wind, and when once they are under way they travel
against the wind as often as with it. There are, indeed, some masses of
ice in that sea of another shape, which the Greenlanders call
‘fall-jökla.’ Their appearance is that of a high mountain rising out of
the sea, and they do not unite themselves to other masses of ice, but
keep apart” (Nansen’s translation).[1622]
POLAR SEAS
In the boreal parts of the Atlantic the Northern writers of our period
placed great whirlpools and fabulous countries peopled by monsters. Adam
of Bremen tells of the explorations of certain noblemen of Friesland
during the time of the predecessor of archbishop Adalbert of Bremen.
Sailing beyond Iceland “towards the extreme axis of the north ... they
suddenly glided into the misty darkness of the stiffened ocean, which
can scarcely be penetrated by the eye” (Nansen’s translation).[1623]
Here they were caught by a terrible current and were almost sucked into
the vortex of the deep, only to be thrown forth away from danger by a
reverse tidal current. Thence they came to an island, fortified like a
town, where they found a race of giants whom they called Cyclopes and
from whom they barely were able to make their escape. Saxo Grammaticus,
writing about 1200, tells of the voyage of a legendary King Gorm of
Denmark and an Icelander Thorkill to an even more mysterious region
called “Farther Biarmaland,” north of Norway.[1624] Here too were
loathsome monsters, a river dividing the land of men from the land of
spirits, and many other wonders. In the _Historia Norwegiae_ we are also
told of a fabulous coast in the North Atlantic upon which sailors had
landed when on the way from Iceland to Norway. This country lay “between
the Greenlanders and the Bjarmas,” and the sailors “asserted that they
had found people of extraordinary size and the land of virgins
[‘virginum terram’] who are said to conceive when they taste water. But
Greenland is separated from these by ice-clad skerries [‘scopulis’]”
(Nansen’s translation).[1625] Yet more full of color is another
description in the same work. Beyond Norway “there is the very deep and
northerly gulf which has in it Charybdis, Scylla, and unavoidable
whirlpools; there are also ice-covered promontories which plunge into
the sea immense masses of ice that have been increased by heaving floods
and are frozen together by the winter cold; with these traders often
collide against their will, when making for Greenland, and thus they
suffer shipwreck and run into danger” (Nansen’s translation).[1626]
Possibly these accounts in the _Historia Norwegiae_ refer to Svalbard,
“the country of the cold coasts,” mentioned in the _Landnámabók_.[1627]
The discovery of Svalbard was placed by the _Icelandic Annals_ in
1194,[1628] and it may well be that sailors in that year were driven out
of their course and landed on the inhospitable shores of
Spitsbergen.[1629]
WINELAND THE GOOD
The voyages of Leif Ericsson and others to the coasts of America,
though they had taken place over a century earlier, were doubtless
remembered by the Icelanders of the period we are studying. Ari Frodhi
in the _Íslendingabók_, written about 1134, refers to Wineland and to
the Skraelings as if they were entirely familiar to his
contemporaries.[1630] There is also a record in the _Icelandic
Annals_, under the date 1121, that the Bishop Eric of Greenland
actually sought Wineland, though we are not told whether his search
was successful or whether he made any important discoveries in
prosecuting it.[1631] The detailed stories of the Wineland voyages
which were current in oral tradition during the eleventh century were
undeniably put into written form long before 1250, although the
versions in which we now have them, the _Saga of Eric the Red_ and the
_Flatey Book_, are of later date.[1632]
The true position of Wineland has for many years been a matter of
acrimonious dispute among historians and geographers, but it is beyond
our province to enter upon this controversy. On the other hand, it is of
interest to point out that the Icelanders themselves or some of them, at
least, must have believed that Wineland lay in relatively southern
latitudes, for an Icelandic geographical description of the world,[1633]
dating perhaps from our period, contains the following remark: Not far
from Markland is “Wineland the Good, which some affirm extends from
Africa; and, if this is so, an arm of the sea separates Wineland and
Markland.”[1634] In Europe outside of the Scandinavian countries
practically nothing was known of Wineland. The earliest mention of it is
in the pages of Adam of Bremen’s description of the North, where we read
the following brief passages: “Moreover he [King Svend Estridsson] spoke
of an island in that ocean discovered by many, which is called Wineland,
for the reason that vines grow wild there, which yield the best of wine.
Moreover, that grain unsown grows there abundantly is not a fabulous
fancy, but from the accounts of the Danes we know to be a fact”
(Reeves’s translation).[1635] Ordericus Vitalis in his _Historia
ecclesiastica_ includes Wineland in a list of countries made subject to
the king of the Norsemen but gives no details.[1636]
Adam of Bremen or a later interpolator[1637] adds to the passage just
quoted a description of the Northern Ocean, which he erroneously places
beyond Wineland. He says: “Beyond this island, it is said that there is
no habitable land in that ocean, but all those regions which are beyond
are filled with unsupportable ice and boundless gloom, to which Marcian
thus refers: ‘One day’s sail beyond Thile the sea is frozen.’ This was
essayed not long since by that very enterprising Northmen’s prince,
Harold, who explored the extent of the Northern Ocean with his ship but
was scarcely able by retreating to escape in safety from the gulf’s
enormous abyss, where before his eyes the vanishing bounds of earth were
hidden in gloom” (Reeves’s translation).[1638]
FABULOUS ISLES
Until modern times the Atlantic has been an ocean filled by the
imaginations of the coast-dwelling peoples of the Old World with
fabulous and fantastic isles. In the _De imagine mundi_ we read of the
Isle of the Gorgons and of the Hesperides,[1639] “among which was that
great land described by Plato as having been submerged beneath that part
of the sea now coagulated—an isle greater in extent even than Africa and
Europe.” In this story we recognize the old legend of Atlantis which had
been the subject of speculation and discussion ever since the time of
Plato. The _De imagine mundi_ then goes on to speak of “Perdita,” or the
Lost Island, which far exceeded all the surrounding countries in the
delightfulness and fertility of all things to be found therein. Though
as a general rule unknown to man, this isle was sometimes to be found by
hazard, though never found when looked for. Hence it was called
“Perdita,” or “Lost.” To it St. Brandan was said to have gone in the
course of his wanderings.
_St. Brandan’s Isles_
For a full account of the islands visited by St. Brandan we must look to
the famous narration of his voyages. Ernest Renan poetically
characterizes this legend as follows: “In the midst of these dreams
there appears with surprising truth a feeling for the picturesque in
polar navigations: the transparence of the sea, the aspects of the ice
floes and icebergs melting in the sun, the volcanic phenomena of
Iceland, the playing of the cetaceans, the characteristic appearance of
the fiords of Norway, the sudden fogs, the milklike sea, green islands
covered with grass which overhangs into the waves....”[1640] In the most
widely known Latin version, which was translated into English and French
during our period,[1641] we are told[1642] that Brandan, the abbot of a
large monastery in Munster, received information from a certain
Barinthus of marvelous isles that the latter had visited in the western
seas and in particular of the “Terra repromissionis sanctorum,” or
Saints’ Land of Promise. Taking seven companions, the saint set out in a
ship built especially for the voyage and wandered for seven years from
one marvelous isle to another. After forty days’ sailing in a northerly
direction they came to an islet, where they entered into a narrow harbor
between high and precipitous rocks. This harbor mouth, just wide enough
to admit a ship, was typical of the ragged western coasts of Ireland and
Scotland and was doubtless suggested to the poet by some bleak cove
among the rocks of St. Kilda or the Outer Hebrides. After leaving the
islet the wanderers reached an isle covered with sheep—perhaps a
reminiscence of the Faroes, the sheep of which had long before been
described by Dicuil.[1643] Beyond this they came to a smooth islet
lacking verdure and with no sand upon it; this turned out to be a sea
monster, which dived beneath the waves when the saint and his companions
tried to light a fire upon its back. Their fortunate escape from the
monster was followed by wanderings that brought them to an isle full of
birds in such numbers and of such brilliant plumage that the voyagers
could scarce see the branches of the trees. Some of the birds could
talk; and one spoke words of prophecy foretelling the future course of
Brandan’s journeys. Thence they came to yet another isle, where they
entered a port with a narrow entrance and found a monastery; then to an
isle with a fresh-water spring which put each brother to sleep for a
period corresponding to the number of cups he drank. After that they
made their way still farther north, where the sea was coagulated, and
then returned to many of the isles already visited in the course of
their earlier sailings and also to fresh marvels—seas of miraculous
clearness, terrible volcanoes, Judas’s rock, the islet of Paul the
hermit.[1644] Finally, after seven whole years, they attained a broad
and spacious country full of trees bearing apples as if it were the
autumn of the year, a land where no night was ever known. Here a youth
greeted Brandan and said that this was the country for which he had been
seeking. Then Brandan sailed back to Ireland, where he lived out the
remainder of his earthly life, and, after his death, returned forthwith
to this “land of promise of the saints,” or Paradise, which for so long
had been his goal.