state of Geographical Knov/ledge
at the tine of the discovery of Araerica.1492
Thomas Gooke Liddleton
j( Reprint. Records of Aiaer.Oath.HiBt.Soc.
of Phila.,Eec.l906. )

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YALE UNIVERSITY
State of Geographical Ktiowledige
at the time of
The piscpvery of America

REV. THOMAS COOKE MIDlltETQt, I>,P,. Q;S'A;

4^

VILLANOYA COLLEGE
DELAWARE GOU^'TY,;J*NMvivANlA

STATE OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE AT
THE TIME OF THE DISCOVERY OF
AMERICA, A. D. 1492.

BY REV. THOMAS COOKE MIDDLETON, D. D..O. S. A.

The limits set for this paper — the progress of geogra
phical discovery during the first fifteen centuries of Chris
tianity, allow of but a broad survey of our theme, a mere
glance at the studies men had made of the world and its
phenomena of land and water, of the products of earth, —
of plants, minerals, metals, as well as of the inhabitants
of earth, of the races of men and brutes; then, as neces
sary sequence when sciences are considered in their various
relationships, of the many phases of human society, — of
governments, states, industries and religions.
For when we speak of geography in its broad — philo
sophic — sense we must embrace, I think it only right to
maintain, all the studies and pursuits of men, in art and
science, in the celestial as well as the terrestrial world of
God. For briefly, without knowledge of natural sciences, as of
astronomy — of the heavens, of the stars there would be no
travel, no voyages, no discoveries; without knowledge of
botany, chemistry, meteorology, physics, there would be
no traffic among men, no industries, no agriculture, whence
as sequence there would be no commercial life, no manu
factures, no productiveness, no social life, nay not even
religion itself. Hence geographical science as we con-

sider it is chiefly threefold in character, — economic geo
graphy, political geography, ecclesiastical geography.
In our treatment of geographical studies during the
ages before Columbus two courses lay open for our in
vestigation, — one the mere classification of lands, coun
tries, already known to scholars in 1492, this the synthetic,
or group, plan, at once simple, clear and easy; the other,
the tracing downwards age by age from the dawn of Chris
tianity, the gradual, steady increase in geographical know
ledge of our globe as obtained by our forefathers in the
Faith, which we may style the analytic plan, is perhaps
more scholarly, even if not somewhat more difficult and
tedious. But — it is perhaps allowable to ask — ^may not both these
schemes be adopted — harmonized — by giving as in panor
ama — in bird's-eye view, the several countries as known
in heathen and Jewish times, and then view as though un
folded as it were on a chart the gradual genesis of geo
graphic knowledge as developed by stages, by successive
discoveries and explorations, until perfected through the
genius of Christianity ? ^
To our point then. With the establishment of the Chris
tian state in the year one of our era, the globe as known to
the Romans was practically in Europe, — the countries
around and dependent on the Mediterranean Sea, (so first
named, by the way, by a Christian savant — St. Isidore of
Seville) with very extended regions however in Asia and
Africa.^ For aroimd that sea had ever hovered the genius
^ The influence of Christian scholarship in the development and ad
vance of geographical science has been eloquently touched upon by the
late Doctor Shea, in his paper " What the Church and the Popes have
done for the Science of Geography." (By John Gilmary Shea, LL. D.,
in Amer. Cath. Quarterly, Phila., 1876, i, 612-35.)
2 When treating of the Mediterranean Sea — "De Mediterraneo
Mari " — St. Isidore observes that "Mare Magnum est, . . . et . . . Medi-
terraneum, quia per Mediam terram . . . perfunditur," etc. (See his
Etymologiae, 1. xiii, c. 16, Migne ed., Patr. Lot, no. 82, col. 484.)

of letters, of scholarship, of political rule, of the master
ship of religion, Jewish, heathen, Christian.
Four main causes we know have led men to travel, to
explore :
1st, commercial intercourse between different countries;
2nd, the operations of war;
3rd, religious zeal of missionary and pilgrim; and
4th, the pursuit of learning itself, and in later times
also pleasure and health.
Of the world known to the Romans besides the Mediter
ranean countries in Europe, as Greece, Italy, France and
Spain, were known also Britain, West Germany, and the
Balkan peninsula. While unknown to them were East
Germany, the Scandinavian peninsula, Russia, Denmark,
Poland and perhaps Ireland. In Asia they knew of Arabia,
Syria, Asia Minor, and the lands overrun by Alexander the
Great, — Persia, India, Scythia, and Bactria. While in
Africa they knew of Egypt and the regions watered by the
Upper Nile, as well as the coast-lines on the Mediterranean,
as far as the Mountains of the Moon, with perhaps Abys
sinia, if not even somewhat further south. Such was the
ancient world whose interests were centered in Rome, chief
metropolis of the heathen state, as afterwards as well as
now the chief see of Christendom — ever the center of a
mighty world of empire dependent on that land-locked sea,
on whose broad bosom sailed apostle and evangehst, first
heralds of the Faith, while the numerous rivers that fed
its channels were so many conduits of religion, which was
borne thereon to countries unheard-of by heathens, yet well
known to the successors of the apostles.
Of our earliest Christian sources of geographic know
ledge, which are exceedingly rich and numerous, especially
regarding the countries named in Holy Writ, are the sev
eral books of the New Testament, which refer often to
Bible lands, to the countries opened to apostolic visits in

Asia and Africa, to India, Scythia, Mesopotamia, Persia,
Bactria, Parthia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nubia. Much light too
is thrown on geographic studies by numerous references to
hitherto unknown countries and places, to be encountered
in the Acts of the Martyrs, the Acts of the Councils of the
Church, and in the writings of the Fathers, all of them
documents that attest of missionary travel to almost the
confines of the earth, — records too that with others to fol
low show that the Church was far beyond the State in its
men of science, in its knowledge of the mere physical
phenomena of earth. Thus at the great Council of Chalce-
don in 451, among the various signers of the acts thereof
were two bishops — Alexander and Timotheus from Scythia,
while St. Jerome in one of his charming and sometimes de
lightfully sketchy letters written about A. D. 403, speaks
of the multitudes of monks " monachorum turbas " ^ that
from India, Persia and Ethiopia, in his own day paid visits
to Bethlehem.
Unknown to the Fathers, those men and scholars of ac
knowledged great parts and rightly held as leaders in liter
ary, social and political spheres, it may be observed, were
few of the fundamental problems (many of them yet un
solved), in natural philosophy, in physics, in biology, all
questions relating to cosmic science, that frequently were
subjects of their discussions as being factors more or less
closely connected with the higher life. Thus the constitu
tion of matter, — of space, the genesis of life — animal and
vegetable, the origin of species, of forms, the character of
light, of heat, of air, of ether, of star-formation and con
stitution, of the form of the earth — in brief of the whole
field of cosmogony itself, whether spiritual or earthly.*
2 See St. Jerome's masterly Essay on Pedagogy — his 107th Epistle —
addressed to the Roman matron Laeta.
* For the various views held by the Fathers, those giants of all-

As to the form of the earth and the existence of anti
podes, mere side-issues however of material sciences, be it
said, of no more practical interest to them than to the great
majority of thinkers, philosophers and statesmen of to-day,
the theories of the Fathers were as follows : the sphericity
of the earth was not denied by even one of the Latin Fath
ers. All Church writers in the West who touched on that
topic, usually however among their obiter dicta, maintained
that the earth was round — the common belief and teaching
too of the Middle Ages. Thus taught St. Augustine, Lac-
tantius, Cassiodorus, St. Isidore of Seville, Venerable Bede,
Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, not to count a host of
minor lights in the intellectual world. °
round learning, see for references to their works Vigouroux Melanges
Bibliques — La Cosmogonie Mosaique (2d ed., Paris, 1889, pp. 47-57).
Among the media of the higher life recognized by scholars at no
time, be it very clearly noted, have mere material physics or kindred
studies concerning the world of bodies been ranked as of primary im
portance in ethics, in psychology, in economics, or any other branch of
refined science. (The spirit of modernity to the contrary notwithstand
ing, etc.)
° In view of our position (as in the text), the following strictures on
Mother Church, fairy-tales by some modern bookmakers (might we
not be justified in styling them fiction-weavers?) read rather amusing.
Needless to say that not a single one of them has any but an exceed
ingly slender, not to say flimsy and shadowy basis in historical monu
ments. They are:
(i) "The doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was placed under
the ban of the church." {Ency. Brit., Phila., pth ed., art. " Map," xv,
524- (2) Again. " It was only by the Greek fathers that the doctrine of
the earth's sphericity continued to be taughft" {lb., 525.)
(3) Then. " In the Patristic Geography the earth is a flat surface."
(Draper, Hist, of the Intellectual Development of Europe, 4th ed., N. Y.,
1865, chap, xix, on the " Approach of the Age of Reason in Europe,"
p. 442.)
(4) Moreover. "The globular form" [of the earth] "had been con
demned by such fathers as Lactantius and Augustine." {lb., p. 442.)
(5) Again: "St. Augustine asserts that 'it is impossible there should
be inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth.'" {lb., p. 233.)
(6) And lastly. " The heretical doctrine of the globular form of
the earth," etc. {lb., 233.)

6
From Aristotle's day, we may add, it was commonly held
that the earth was spherical — round. Though previous ta
this time we find that the tabular theory was common, i. e.,
that the earth was flat like a table, or disk-shaped, as con
ceived by Thales, who therein was followed by his suc
cessors in the Ionian school, including Anaxagoras. On
the contrary, Cosmas Indicopleustes — the traveler-monk of
Egypt — maintained that the earth was rectangular, while
the heathen Democritus of Abdera taught that it was ob
long — egg-shaped, i. e., half as long again from east to
west — a belief attributed falsely, however, to Cassiodorus,
a church writer of later date, who in two separate places in
his works — in one emphatically stands for the sphericity, or
globular shape, of the earth. Even the famed Ptolemy,
the geographer, accepting the opinion that the earth was
much larger east and west, than north and south, adopted
with this belief the terms, which naturally grow out of it,
i. e., longitude and latitude.
Among the heathen philosophers the spherical, or globu
lar, theory of the earth was taught by most of the early
astronomers, — by Pythagoras, who was the first to proclaim
it, then by Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, Strabo and Euclid.
Moreover, as is easily seen by reference to their works, the
Fathers quoted frequently and extensively from the mas
ters of physical science in heathendom. They were thor
oughly conversant with the leading philosophers and think
ers of antiquity. Thus St. Augustine quotes freely from
Archimedes, Hippocrates, Varro, whom he styles " doc-
tissimus," — most learned, and from Pythagoras. So too
was St. Jerome at home with the best heathen thought.
The sphericity of the earth however was not held by some
eastern, or Greek, Fathers, as St. John Chrysostom ° and
" If Mr. Justin Winsor, who though undoubtedly well versed in some
sub-branches of story, had been less an adept in geographical lore, he

the school of Antioch, nor by Cosmas. While as to the
question of antipodes, the Fathers held very markedly dif
ferent opinions. By St. Clement of Rome, St. Gregory
of Nyssa, St. Irenaeus, and St. John Damascen, their exis
tence was admitted. While St. Augustine, who refers to
the question more than once, does not seem to care to ven
ture any very positive opinion as to whether the opposite
side of the globe was inhabited or not, for the very good
reason, as he distinctly states, that nothing positive what
ever was known of the other side of the globe, as no one
had ever explored it, nor was there any mention of it in
history. Therefore, as he declares, he would neither deny
the existence of antipodes, nor admit it, until better in
formed.^ assuredly could not have compiled his Life of Columbus, so valuable
for its archeological researches ; nor had he been of more delicately
poised scientific spirit, according to high scholarly standards, would he
ever have penned the implied historical mis-statement relative to schol
ars, who were both deeply learned and wise.
He says : " There had been during the days of St. [John] Chrysostom
and other of the fathers a decision of the Church against it," j. e., the
sphericity of the earth (Winsor's Christopher Columbus, Boston, 1892,
pp. 119, 120), a charge for which, contrariwise we may just as stoutly
maintain, there is not a scintilla of undisputed evidence. Pity Mr. Win
sor, though the same may be said of other dogmatizers, instead of cred
iting old-style yarns and fables, did not himself live up at least to the
very admirable ethical norm attributed by him to the French savant
Ampere — " to present," namely, " as doubtful what is true, sooner than
to give as true what is doubtful." (Winsor, ib., p. 148.)
' In his City of God, where he treats of antipodes, St. Augustine de
clares what may be held as his final decisien in the question that noth
ing positive is known about peoples on the other side of the earth, as
" thereon history is wholly silent, nor aught known, save by mere guess
work." The words of the saint are: "Neque hoc ulla historica cog-
nitione didicisse se affirmant, sed quasi ratiocinando conjectant." {De
Civ. Dei, 1. xvi, c. 9.)
In other places in his works the saint dwells at times at considerable
length on many earthly phenomena of the visible physical world around
us. Consult especially his treatise on " Creation " in De Genesi ad lit.,
1. i, 39, c. 19; and 1. ii. 20, c. 20.

8
In olden days three Church writers only, so far as I have
read, denied the existence of antipodes, one a Latin, in the
Western Church — Lactantius, a scholar of much renown,
who however admitted the sphericity of the earth, the other
two Greek, — Cosmas, (named above) and Procopius of
Gaza, who therein however merely followed some of the
most illustrious scholars of heathen antiquity, as by them
the existence of antipodes, though admitted by Aristotle,
Cicero, Cleomedes, Pliny, Macrobius and Capella had been
denied by Eratosthenes, Lucretius, Plutarch, Polybius and
Strabo.* Nor much wonder. Since in those early days men of
note, scholars, experts many of them in physical sciences,
were at odds on those two problems so closely associated
with geographical phenomena.
In the interval between the downfall of the Roman em
pire (A. D. 476) and the middle ages, were many Chris
tian scholars famed for their erudition not only sacred but
profane, of whom the chief were St. Gregory the Great,
a copious writer, author of many works of miscellaneous
character, besides being patron of scholars, protector of
sciences and arts, and of statesmanlike genius as shown
in his endeavors to reform the Roman commonwealth on
stable lines. Then Cassiodorus, one of the few men of
learning at the Downfall, — a man of wonderfully keen ob
servation, erudite, statesman, then monk and author too
of many works on history, antiquities, geography, which in
his instructions to monks — to students of the higher learn-
* References to the works of the above-named writers in Vigouroux
{ut sup., especially p. 52).
As to the first-named scholar, Lactantius, who came out flat-footed,
as it were, in his denial of the existence of antipodes, he is the only
patristic writer (so far as known) who expressly takes such a view
of that problem. (See his Divin. Inst., iii, c. 24, for his treatise De
falsa sapientia.)

ing— Jhe earnestly recommends them to study.' In his cos
mography, a treatise deservedly admirable for his varied
knowledge of the world, Cassiodorus describes the several
countries and provinces of the decaying empire. The eru
dition of the man, were further proof needed, may be
gauged in part from the writers he quotes, one hundred and
twenty-eight in all, among them the ripest scholars of past
ages. Here in brief is a list of authors, of poets, philoso
phers, historians, scientists named in the works of Cas
siodorus. They are: Euclid, Homer, Columella,, Plato,
Aristotle, Lucretius, Martial, Hippocrates, Ennius, Philo-
laus, Pliny, Terence, Caesar, Pythagoras, Josephus, Macro
bius, Lucan, Archimedes, Philo, Horace, Seneca, Virgil,
Varro, Sallust.
As to the form of the earth though Cassiodorus has often
been named (wrongly however) as upholder of its oblong
or egg-shaped figure, this, as a moment's glance at his
works will show, is a charge wholly unwarranted. As in
two passages at least (as said above) he most positively de
clares that the earth is spherical, or round. Thus in his
Exposition of Psalm yy when, referring to the earth he
says that "the orb of the earth is absolutely round as a
wheel " ; while again in his treatise on astronomy he de
clares even more stoutly that " the world (as said) is of
spherical roundness." That he also refers to the oblong,
or egg-shaped, form of the earth in his cosmography, is
true, but this, be it stated, was not his own opinion; he
was merely quotii^ the heathen Varro as having main
tained it."
• In his De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum (in thirty-three chap
ters, Migne ed., no. 70, ii, 1139, 1140), Cassiodorus has a chapter headed
"Cosmographia a monachis legenda," i. e., the study of earth and its
phenomena inter alia was to be part of the usual curriculum of cloistral
schools. 1" The opinion of Cassiodorus as to the sphericity of the earth (pre-

ID
No Christian writer, it may be added, except maybe the
merchant-monk Cosmas, held that the earth was of any
other figure than round. Though even herein not a few
of the sages of antiquity also have blundered, in so boldly
asserting its apparently absolute sphericity, since as a mat
ter of fact, or at least of well-established theory, we may
say the earth really is not wholly round but very much
flattened at the poles.
cisely as upheld by modern physicists) is so clearly and positively set
forth by him as not to allow of the faintest shadow of doubt of his
position therein. Twice (as said in the text) does he maintain that the
earth is round. His words are : "Sive magis in rota, orbem terrarum
debemus accipere, qui in speciem rotae absohita rotunditate conclu-
ditur." (Migne, Patr. Lat., no. 70, ii, 553.)
Again in his treatise on the Arts he says : "Nam mundus ipse, ut qui-
dam dicunt, sphaerica fertur rotunditate collectus." {Ib., 1216.)
While as to Varro's position his words are : "Mundi quoque figuram
curiosissimus Varro longae rotunditati in Geometriae volumine com-
paravit, formam ipsius ad ovi similitudinem trahens, quod in latitudine
quidem rotundum, sed in longitudine probatur oblongum." {Ib., 1218.)
Doctor Laurie, while styling Cassiodorus " the learned," " the able
minister," Secretary of State of Theodoric, refers also to his monastic
college at Vivaria, near Squillace, in the province of Calabria, in south
east Italy, in 540. (See The Rise and Early Constitution of Univer
sities, with a Survey of Mediceval Education. By S. S. Laurie, LL. D.,
in " International Education Series," N. Y., Appleton, 1902, pp. 26, 27.)
The doctor errs, however, in locating this educational center at
"Viviers," which really is in France, as also does the Encydopeedia
Britannica, which, moreover, puts it wrongly in the Bruzzi province of
Italy (v. 161, art. "Cassiodorus"), wherein we may note, mention is
made of the " great erudition, ingenuity and labor " of that statesman,
or as Warton styles him, the " eminent Roman scholar . . . the first
that ever digested a series of royal charts or instruments." (See Hist.
of English Poetry, London, 184a. By Thomas Warton, i, Ixxxiii.)
For Cassiodorus' residence at Vivaria, see the Prolegomena to his
works {ut sup., i, 467, 468) and the description of his monastic retreat,
with its fish-weirs, mills, fountains, baths, etc. (ii, 1143, 1144).
While referring to the book treasures of Vivaria, Cassiodorus notices
the fact, among many of his very interesting obiter dicta, that the sixth-
century students therein were furnished with machine self-feeding
lamps and day- and night-clocks. His words are: "Paravimus etiam
.... mechanicas lucernas .... ipsas sibi nutrientes," etc. {Ib., 1145,
1 146.)

II
Then the third in our list of geographers, — ^the famed
Cosmas Indicopleustes, — ^the voyager to India, whence his
name, an Egyptian merchant, traveler to the far east, who
had sailed to India, whither he had made many journeys,
and! visited many countries; then a monk at Alexandria,
where he drew up his cosmography entitled Topographia
Christiatm, or Christian Geography, which though in many
places shows he was somewhat credulous, yet on the whole
makes very interesting reading. Therein Cosmas describes
particularly India, with which he seems to have been well
acquainted; he refers frequently to the great number of
Christians, and the flourishing state of the Church in Cey
lon and Persia ; he had knowledge of the Maldive Islands ;
had sailed in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean; had visited
Abyssinia and Socotra, and apparently the Persian Gulf,
West India and C^lon.^^
Proof of the amazing scholarship of Cosmas are the
writers he drew upon in his cosmography, whose names at
test the vastness of his reading, some seventy in all, the most
illustrious savants of antiquity, among them these heathen
philosophers, poets, scientists: Archimedes, Aristotle,
Euclid, Plato, Ptolemy, Proclus, Solon, Homer, Socrates,
Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Pjrtheas of Marseilles and Xeno-
phon. ^1 Relative to Cosmas, we quote the praise bestowed upon his tech
nical genius so far beyond that of his contemporaries by Mr. Fiske,
who, speaking of his scholarship, declares that " along with these cos-
mographical speculations, Cosmas shows a wider geographical knowl
edge of Asia than any earlier writer. He gives a good deal of interest
ing information about India and Ceylon, and has a fairly correct idea
of the position of China, which he calls Tzinista, or Chinistan." {Dis
covery of America. By John Fiske, Boston, [1892,] i, 268.)
The authors cited by Cosmas may be found in his Topographia,
(Migne ed., Patr. Graeca, no. 88, pp. 23-28,) where we may also note
that the name given by Cosmas to China is somewhat different from
Mr. Fiske's version, it there appearing as " Tzinitza " or " Tzxne."
(Migne, ut sup., p. 96.)

12
Along with science-books such as have been named must
also be ranked another class of works, wherein are to be
found many items of geographical interest, — the numerous
itineraries — travel or guide-books, of which the earliest
we have knowledge of go back as far as the sixth century.
It was a sequence of the Faith within them, — due partly to
law, partly to discipline and custom, that from almost
the beginning of the Christian era, — the Faithful, — pre
lates, laics, from no matter what part of the world, should
make periodically visits to the holy places of the Bible-
lands, of Italy, or of other countries.
Hence a numerous mass of literature, — of which samples
are extant, — was issued for the benefit of travelers, and
pilgrims, embodying many points useful to the wayfarer,
— relating to routes of travel, roads by land and sea, short
cuts in this country, or that, by-paths as well as main
avenues of travel, places where lodging might be had, as
well as places where risks would be encountered, — ^all mat
ters of considerable moment, as may well be surmised, to
the prospective traveler or voyager. Of such itineraries we
have two of sixth-century origin, one — the story of a pil
grimage to the Holy Land during the reign of the emperor
Theodosius — by a certain Egeria, or Eucheria, a lady ap
parently from Galicia, and another by one Antoninus of
Piacenza.^^ But of these travel-books in later ages, especially in the
Crusade times, by lay-pilgrim as well as cleric the number
goes on increasing, the matter becomes perhaps more inter
esting and the value to the student correspondingly evident.
12 For the itinerary or Peregrinatio of Egeria, called by him "Silvia,"
see Duchesne, who gives it in full, in his Christian Worship: its Origin
and Evolution (London, 1903, pp. 490-523) ; also the Jesuit, Father
Thurston, in Dub. Rev., for April, 1906 (p. 442), for the name of
Egeria; and for the itinerary of Antoninus, Migne, Patr. Lat., no. 72,
pp. 897-918.

13
From the Downfall of the empire despite the many draw
backs to intellectual culture from barbarians and Moslems,
the antiquarian notes a steady progressive revival in arts
and letters especially in three great fields: First, in the
foundation of numerous centres of instruction, — of schools
of learning, of architecture and music, as well as in the fact
that trades were established throughout western Europe
chiefly under the protection of the Church in Italy, Gaul,
Spain, Britain, and Ireland. Chronicles of these medieval
times from the seventh century down, refer in very many
places to institutions of learning, to cathedral schools, to
monastery schools, to nunnery schools, to free schools, to
schools for primary education as well as advanced.^' Then
1' Of the abbey-, convent-, and grammar-schools, of the Church, of
the libraries, of the various editions of books, and chiefly the training
of gentle youth in intellectual accomplishments in early and even later
medieval times in England preceding the Reformation era, Warton's
rich repertory of antiquities abounds in masses of useful indexes to
further information — in the authors named therein. (See his Hist., ut.
sup., especially i, Ixxxii-cxxxviii, for his dissertation " On the Intro
duction of Learning into England"; then ii, 544-562, in his section on
the " Revival of Classical Learning," continued in iii, 1-15.)
Dr. Laurie {ut sup., p. 147) relates that in the eleventh century (ac
cording to Crevier) the daughters of one Manegolde, a German, and
lecturer of renown, " opened a school in Paris for girls — an interesting
fact indeed in the history of education."
Again, from a critical description of the literary and artistic activity
of nuns in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, see Woman under Mon-
asticism, Chapters on Saint Lore, and Convent Life between A. D. 500
and A. D. 1500. By Lina Eckenstein. Cambridge [England], at the
University Press, 1896. Especially rich in school data (compiled by
this deeply versed student of saintly scholars and heroines) are chap
ters vii (pp. 222-255) on "Art Industries in the Nunnery," and ix (pp.
305-353) on " Early Mystic Literature." For the high standard of art-
learning nourished in nuns' schools in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
especially at Gandersheim, in Eastphalia in Germany, see also pp. 148-
151. (Some of the conclusions, however, of this gifted antiquarian will
be found open to question.)
For an admirable comprehensive picture of the many-sided beauties
of the educational world in pre-Reformation days in England, see the
Constitutional Hist, of England, by Bishop Stubbs, iii, ch. xxi, no. 496,
(5th ed. Oxford, 1896, pp. 628 sq.)

14
intellectual progress is very apparent in the numerous
codes, or bodies of law, as witnessed to in the synods of
Toledo in Spain, in the immense mass of capitularies of
Charlemagne and other Prankish rulers, and the institutes
of the Anglo-Saxon kings, — of Alfred the Great and his
successors. While thirdly, the spread of civilization even
among peoples just rescued from barbarism as among many
British and Teutonic tribes is witnessed in the common
wealths established among them, of cities, boroughs, free-
towns, with their guilds and self-chosen rulers, with their
markets for foreign wares as well as domestic. Hence trade
to strange lands and countries, with new incentives to travel,
and explorations. With the revival too of letters and the
spread of econ'omic principles, there sprang up increased
anxiety for further knowledge of the material globe and the
physical mysteries of land and sea.^*
With the seventh century opens the age of explorations,
voyages, journeys through Europe and on the waters of
the western seas, by keen observers of marine and ter-
restial phenomena. Very noteworthy among these inves
tigators was the Irish saint, Brendan, styled " The Navi
gator," of Clonfert, who died May i6th, 577, and who be
sides a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, made several voyages
towards the north and west, — one especially in which he
sailed, it is said, as far as Iceland, maybe even too to
America, — a voyage that has given rise to many romantic
stories, replete with picturesque traits, yet with but little
trustworthy information, — ^tales however that while with
out doubt not improbable, do not seem traceable beyond the
eleventh century or at the earliest the eighth and ninth
1* On the intellectual grandeur of the Christian world in those ages,
the Calvinist Guizot is well worth reading for the progress of scholar
ship in science and art, both speculative and practical. (See his His
tory of Civilization in France, ed. Hazlitt, N. Y., Appleton, 1857, ii, 88-
103, IVth Lect.)

IS
with any positive degree of certainty. Yet of these won
derful reliques of medieval heroism, it must be avowed that
along with many accounts of sea-trips by Norwegians and
other daring explorers of the deep, they have been the in
centive to a long series of travel-stories of the middle ages,
— of a distinctive species of folk-lore in form semi-real,
semi-poetical, — that though in olden days the charm and
study at once of schoolman and bard, in our own
constitute so many veritable puzzles to scientists and
physicists.^' Truly immense, yet on the whole unsatisfactory and dis
appointing in its vagueness, is the mass of literature
which has grown up around these ever wonderful stories
of St. Brendan, and the Norsemen, Biomi, Leif and their
followers, who are said to havf crossed the Atlantic, to
have reached even our American shores, which they named
Vinland and Helleland.
1' For the wonderful legends associated with the navigator-saint,
Brendan, which, without much doubt, may be classed among our vast
collection of so-called " Eccentric Literature," the reader will do well
to consult the temperate, though brief, studies on his life and achieve
ments in O'Curry's Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish
History, (Dublin, 1861,) on "The fanciful and extravagant character"
of St. Brendan's voyages about 540 (pp. 288, 289) ; also Joyce, A Social
History of Ancient Ireland, (London, 1903, i, 295, 296,) for historic
tales of expeditions by sea.
A mass of authorities, it may be added, though of very unequal
weight or value, relative to St. Brendan's voyages has been gathered
by Father de Roo in his Hist, of America before Columbus, Phila. and
London, 1900, especially in vol. ii, ch. i.
Mr. Fiske, in his work cited above, where he treats of the alleged
discoveries, etc., of pre-Columbian voyagers and travelers, very perti
nently and judiciously observes that " we may admit, at once, that
'there is no good reason why any one of them may not have done' what
is claimed, but, at the same time, the proof that any one of them did
do it is very far from satisfactory." (Fiske, ut sup., i, 150, with refer
ence to Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., N. Y., [1889,] i, 59, on "Pre-
Columbian Explorations.")
But those -who prefer "to present as doubtful what is true, sooner
than to give as true what is doubtful," should consult Joyce and
O'Curry {ut sup.).

i6
But beyond dispute is the fact that early Irish voyagers
— monks — colonized some of the northernmost islands of
Europe, — the groups named Shetland, and Orkney — the
" Orcades " of classic writers, and the Faroe Isles. It is
known too that St. Boniface, an Anglo-Saxon monk, who
went from England to the Continent on mission service for
the Faith, Christianized many peoples in the Rhine valley
and other parts of Germany.
In the chronicles of these ages, mention too is found of
an institution as early at least as the ninth century, one that
seems to have been overlooked by many antiquarians, — a
usage, we may say that went far to lighten the hardships
of travel, at least, on land — the so-called " Tractoriae " of
the Roman pontiffs, a term of many meanings in old
chronicles, among others that of being a kind of traveling-
card, passport or warrant, issued to parties going to and
fro, no matter where, throughout the Christian world, on
church business, whereby they were entitled when on the
road, to claim service on any domain of the popes — ^pro
visions for their journey, lodging, food, horses, and the
like, with full entertainment for man and beast.^"
Regarding the writers on geographical topics during
these pre-crusade times, there is frequent mention in contem
porary authorities, of King Alfred of England, who wrote
a geography of Europe; of St. Wilibald, an Anglo-Saxon,
who gave a description of his seven years' journey and voy
age to and from the Holy Land, as did also St. Adamnan,
an Irishman of Raphoe, tenth abbot of lona, — name of
the early medieval island of Hii, Hy or I, of the Hebrides,
one of the former great strongholds of Christianity.^'
18 Some studies on this travel-custom of papal commissioners and
messengers in early medieval times are traced m Liber Diurnus Roman.
Pontif. Migne, ed. Patr. Lat., no. 105, col, 98-100.
1' Some interesting and valuable observations on King Alfred's Geog
raphy may be found in Notes and Queries, London, 1850, i, 257, 313.

17
Worthiest however of all these writers for his erudition
as well as keen insight into the mysteries of the earthly
world, is St. Isidore of Seville, who besides writing copi
ously on history, biography, the chieftains of Goths and
Vandals, composed a set of treatises, very encyclopedical in
character, on the arts and sciences, — a work that amazes
the scholar for its extraordinarily miscellaneous learning
and reach on such incongruous topics as astronomy and
music, animal biology and naval architecture, medicine and
mathematics. In his astronomical section St. Isidore treats
on the length of star-days, on eclipses, etc., while in other
departments he discourses on agriculture, sports and games,
painting and viniculture; he refers also to magnetic iron-

But for the wonderful genius of this ruler as statesman, scholar, book-
lover, author and artist, who "sent a Norwegian shipmaster to explore
the White Sea, .... Wulfstan to trace the coast of Esthonia, envoys
[to bear] his presents to the churches of India and Jerusalem," etc.,
who moreover " enriched Orosius by a sketch of the new geographical
discoveries in the North," see the History of the English People, by
John Richard Green, Phila., i, especially pp. 87, 88.
From Lina Eckenstein's work {ut ante, pp. 139-142) where an inter
esting though brief analysis is given of St. Wilibald's itinerary, we
learn that, with his traveling companion Tidberht, the saint wandered
for seven years through southern Europe, Syria, Palestine, Holy Land,
and Greece, and that on his return to Germany he was installed as
bishop in the newly-founded see of Eichstatt. Furthermore, the author
ess states that the narrative of the saint's pilgrimage is due to the pen
of an Anglo-Saxon nun at Heidenheim, whose name, however, is not
of record, who wrote parts of it at Wilibald's dictation. (She had
come from England to Germany about Z65.) And that the account she
gives of the saint's experience contains one of the earliest descriptions
written in northern Europe of a journey to Palestine, which has been
commented on by modern writers as a curious literary monument of
the time.
St. Adamnan's work De Locis Sanctis, epitomized by Venerable Bede
in the XVIth and XVIIth chapters of the fifth book of his Eccl. Hist.,
is the narraitive he took down from the lips of the Gallic bishop, Arculf,
of his visit to the Holy Places, whither he had gone on pilgrimage.
About 701 Adamnan gave his story to King Ealdfrith, or Alfrid, of
Northumbria.

i8
ore, quicksilver, ductile glass, glass-making, and water and
oil-hones.^' The literature of those ages, to quote the Calvinist Guizot,
" abounded in philosophers, politicians, and orators ; it agi
tated the most important questions, the most pressing in
terests." " If the " wheel-maps " of the globe, devised by
St. Isidore, with their poetic, mystical forms and divisions,
are apt to raise a smile with modern scholars, it is worth not
ing that for even hundreds of years after his day, maps con
tinued to represent many similar unrealities, many strange-
looking, legendary creatures, in the guise of men, beasts,
fishes, birds, some on land, others in the water, yet such as
no eye had ever seen save in fancy. Neither of Cosmas
then, nor of the learned scholar of Seville, is it fair to single
1* The very encyclopedical works of St. Isidore, )'. e., his Etymologiae,
or "Books on the Beginning or Origin of Things," is highly, even en
thusiastically, praised by Dr. Laurie for the wonderful erudition dis
played therein. Describing the saint's works, the doctor says : " The
twenty books of Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville (died 636) is, I sup
pose, the first encyclopsedia. The first book treats of the seven liberal
arts; the second is devoted to rhetoric; the third to arithmetic. The
remaining bobks take a wide and encyclopaedic range, and embrace
medicine, geography, Biblical criticism, Church history, laws, languages,
a Latin lexicon, a treatise on Man, on Natural Phenomena, Agriculture,
Mineralogy, etc. They constitute a valuable record of the state of
knowledge at the beginning of the seventh century." (Laurie, ut sup.,
p. 67.) So much for Dr. Laurie.
The slur, therefore, on St. Isidore's intelligence cast by some flaw-
hunters, their fun-making relative to his " wheel maps," may be set
down as wholly unwarranted — first, as being engendered, it would seem,
by an ugly, cynical, even un-Christian prejudice; and second, as trace
able, in part at least, to their not unwilling reliance on wholly untrust
worthy, mere second-hand authorities — the latter, be it noted, com
monly looked upon as a most damaging blunder in scholardom.
Some bookmakers, we may observe, seem to have compiled a Liher
Expurgatorius, as it were, of all arts, sciences and what not, history
included ; to claim, moreover, each one for himself universal censorship,
with power to determine what is art, what is science, what is history,
and what they are not.
i» See Guizot, "Civilization" {ut sup.).

19
out their blunders for ridicule in view of the vast amount
of genuine information to be foimd in their writings.
Following is a somewhat lengthy series of writers on
physics — on natural sciences, astronomy, and the like. As,
in the eighth century, the Irish monk Virgilius, or Fefgil,
known as " The Geometer," an abbot of Aghaboe, in what
is now Queen's County in Ireland, who later became bishop
of Salzburg, a see in the Austrian Tyrol, who taught pub
licly that the earth was round, that people lived on the
opposite side of it, that the possibility of circumnavigating
the globe was beyond doubt, — a feat by the way held as im
possible by the heathen geographer Ptolemy nor one that
was accomplished until eight centuries after by Iberian
genius. As to the threat of excommunication and deposition is
sued for reasons however not wholly clear by Pope Zachary
against one Virgilius — a cleric of Salzburg, for upholding
certain doctrines regarding the formi of the earth and the
antipodes, it is clear fromi the papal letter to St. Boniface
on the affair, that the defendant cleric was some other per
son than Bishop Virgilius, the physicist.^"
But to continue our list. Among other writers of worth
comes the Venerable Bede, historian, scholar, who besides
a history of the Angles, wrote on chronology, poetry, bio
logy, and the equinoxes. Then Alcuin, superintendent of
the schools in the Prankish empire, under Charlemagne,
who wrote on medicine, arithmetic, music, geometry, astro
nomy and physics. Then again Dicuil, an Irishman, who in
835 composed a treatise on the measurement of the earth
— De Mensura Orbis Tetrae, of which many editions have
been made by German and French scholars. He recalls too
^0 For Bishop Virgilius, one of the most advanced scholars of his day,
see Joyce, {ut sup., i, 468,) and for the Salzburg cleric of the same
name, and the Papal Letter of Pope Zachary to Archbishop Boniface,
in condemnation of him, Harduin, "Concilia," Paris, 1714, iii, 1912-1013.

20
the fact that thirty years previous, — in 795, he had been
informed by Irish ecclesiastics, who had returned from
thence, of the great length of the days in Iceland.^^
And finally, a brilliant example of all-round scholarship,
of astronomical and geographical knowledge especially, —
the monk Dungal, a solitary living in France, somewhere
near Paris apparently, who in 811 at the bidding of his
abbot, Waldo, and in answer to the Emperor (Hiarlemagne,
who had questioned him thereon, explained (though not
wholly satisfactorily) the possibiUty of a double eclipse of
the sun that it was said had been witnessed in Europe the
year before. In his paper on that phenomenon Dungal
notes the inclination of the plane of the moon's orbit to
that of the ecliptic, and he sets forth the asti-onomical prin
ciple that for an eclipse whether of sun or moon to occur,
it was necessary that the moon should be in the plane of the
ecliptic. A fault however in this scholar, though not re
cognized as such for even ages later, was his belief in the
geocentric hypothesis of Ptolemy. Dungal discourses also
on the sphericity, or globosity, of the earth, as well as on
star-days, the yearly period of each star revolution on its
own axis, besides naming also the various stars. While his
familiarity with the chief writers of antiquity is shown by
his references among others, to Plato, Archimedes, Pliny,
Macrobius, Virgil, and Cicero.^^
Noteworthy especially, and perhaps the earliest instance
in the history of cartography at least on a large scale, is the
wall-map of the world, painted in his banquet-hall at the
Lateran, by order of Pope Zachary (A. D. 741-762), the
21 For the Irish geographer, Dicuil, see Joyce {ut sup., i, 344, 34s,
469). 22 Dungal's treatise in full, of which a very brief summary is given
in the text, may be read in Lib. Diurn. {ut sup., col. 447-58.).
See also Joyce, {ut sup., i, 468-70,) who from his well-tempered crit
ical remarks on the subject seems to he one of the few scholars who
have studied Dungal in the original.

21
one by the way, who condemned the cleric Virgilius for cer
tain geographical beliefs. This mural map, no doubt a
masterpiece of pictorial art in its day, is represented by
Anastasius — " The Librarian," a contemporary of the Pon
tiff's, as having borne appropriate descriptions in verse.^^
During those ages of almost increasing violence on land
and sea by barbarians, Norsemen, Saracens, there were
fairly insurmountable barriers to any wide spread of learn
ing, even among the most highly cultured regions of west
ern Europe. For therein "monasteries, the refuge and
sanctuary of instruction," according to Guizot, were de
stroyed, schools closed, libraries burned.
And yet there was progress in scientific work. In the
ninth century when Norsemen went to Iceland, they found
books, croziers, bells, with other relics of the visits of
Irish missionaries. Similar " finds " too were made two
centuries later. From the tenth century (A. D. 985),
Greenland, then Christianized, remained in more or less fre
quent intercourse with the continent of Europe, for five
centuries, as attested by numerous bulls of the pontiffs, —
the last official paper issued by Pope Nicholas V, bearing
date September 25th, 1448.
Besides the encylopedical library of Cassiodorus (already
referred to), large collections of books were made in the
ninth and eleventh centuries, as attested by the library-lists
yet extant of several monastic school-centres, which show
that besides theologies, philosophies, scripture-treatises,
these treasure-stores of knowledge comprised also a very
varied assortment of chronicles, travel-books, and works
on natural sciences. In the monastery library at Flaviac in
28 See Anastasius, the Librarian — Bibliotecarius — in his "De Vitis
Pontif." (Migne, Patr. Lat., no. 128, ii, 1055,) whose words relative to
Pope Zachary are as follows : "Fecit autem . . porticum atque turrem
. . . et . . super eamdem turrem triclinium . . . Ubi et orbis terrarum
descriptionem depinxit, atque diversis versiculis ornavit," etc.

22
France, in the ninth century, were the works of Eusebius^
Sozomen, Socrates, Cassiodorus on Arithmetic, the Gesta
Francorum, and a Venerable Bede ; at the one at Fontanelle
(also in France), another school-centre, were a Josephus,
a Bede de compute ac ratione temporuw,, and two copies of
a treatise "Super anni circulum!' S>f»iL
In the monastery library at Pomposia, in Spain,, were the
works of Pliny and Sohnus. While at Bee library, in
France, one of the most renowned teaching-centres of th&
age, home of the great schoolmen and statesmen Lanfranc
and St. Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, the book-list at
tests the collection of a remarkably large number of works^
— one hundred and thirteen on high-class learning, and
very miscellaneous in character, of which the following'
were on natural sciences chiefly : a Macrobius, Seneca, Mar-
tianus Capella De Nuptiis Mercurii et Fhilologiae, Pliny
the Younger on Natural History (in 36 books), Hermes.
Trismegistus, Pomponius Mela on Cosmography, Florus,
Palladius on Agriculture, Vegetius on Military Art, and
Gilbertus on Geometry. In the Bee collection moreover
were works on music, astronomy, physics, arithmetic, psy
chology, medicine, dialectics, rhetoric, with a lot of travel-
books, or itineraries, besides the works of Cicero, Sueton
ius, Quintillian, Plato, Chalcidius, Ovid, Justinian and'
Apuleius.^* Among the writers of the eleventh century, though simi
lar love for natural sciences and the refined arts was cher
ished in preceding ages and later, we have St. William of
Hirsau, who drew up some treatises on astronomy, and
2* The book-lists of these libraries, with the titles of the works once
treasured therein, may be studied in full in the following volumes of
Migne's Patr. Lat., viz. : " Flaviac," in Lib. Diurn. {ut sup., pp. 742,
743i) "Fontanelle," {ib., 739, 740;) "Pomposia," for the description
given therein by the cleric Henricus, in Patr. Lat., no. 150, pp. 1348-
1358 ; and " Bee," once the great book-center of Normandy, {ib., pp.
770-782).

with Aribo known as " The Scholastic " and Joannes Cotto
wrote also in masterly style on music. While Constantine
Africanus, " a man of European reputation," the physician-
monk and teacher of Salerno, composed and translated sev
eral treatises on medicine.^" Then Giraldus Cambrensis,
2° For the works of these scientists and artists in Migne, see his Patr.
Lat., no. ISO, pp. 1147-1178, for the long musical treatise of St. William
of Hirsau; for Aribo's, ib., 1307-1346; and for Cotto's, ib., 1391-1430.
While for the scholarship of Constantine, the African, and the medical
school at Salerno, see Dr. Laurie, who, referring to Constantine as
" the most learned man of his time in all medical science," adds also
that he was " a man of European reputation who finally placed Saler-
num in the front as a great and specialized medical studium publicum,"
where also (it is to be added) he notes there were " women students
of medicine." (Laurie, ut sup., pp. 113, 114). At page 146 he ranks
him for his intellectual parts with the famed Abelard, the subtle meta
physician of Paris, and Irnerius, the master of law at Bologna. (See
also his comments on Constantine, p. 187.)
The antiquarian Warton, in his Hist, of English Poetry, {ut sup., ii,
204,) mentions several valuable details relative to the life and genius
of Constantine.
In confirmation of the eulogies lavished on this physician-monk, the
Ency. Brit., speaking of the school of Salerno, states that " in the
course of the eleventh century, under the teaching of Constantine the
African (died 1087), the celebrity of Salerno became diffused all over
Europe." (See art. "Universities," xxiii, 888.)
As sequence to our eulogy of Constantine may be added the follow
ing relative to a woman doctor of medicine of medieval times, the cele
brated nun, St. Hildegard of Bingen (born 1098, died 1178), compiler of
two books of medicine, whereof one, according to Lina Eckenstein, in
her Woman under Monasticism, is usually called " Physica." Fur
thermore describing it, she says that " its amplified title runs ' On the
nature of man, of the various elements and of various creatures and
plants, and on the way in which they are tiseful to man.' This book, of
which the printing-press issued several editions in the sixteenth century,
has been characterized by the scientist Virchow as an early ' materia
medica,' curiously complete considering the age to which it belongs.'
(Virchow, R., 'Zur Geschichte des Aussatzes, besonders im Mittel-
alter,' in Archiv fiir pathol. Anatomic, vol. 18, p. 286.) Haeser, in his
history of medicine, also points out the importance of the work, saying
that 'it contains descriptions of the medicinal properties of the best
known animals, plants and minerals, together with directions how to
improve accepted remedies against illness in man and beast.' " (Hae-

24
who visited Ireland in 1185, the first foreigner, it is said,
who wrote a detailed description of that country, as inter
esting as it is valuable for its observations.^"
All through the Middle Ages closely connected, moreover
in school courses, were such studies as botany with its de
partments on flowers, plants and gums, and mineralogy for
stones, gems and metals, — all of service in church, all im
portant media in the ceremonies of Divine worship, in the
adornment of sacred buildings, in the manufacture of
church vessels and instruments, as chalices, bells, organs,
and altar furniture as candlesticks, vases and the like.
In the description of old-time monasteries mention is
made of industrial departments managed by the brethren,
as laboratories, fovmdries, tanneries, beside their studios,
or art-halls and libraries, wherein were books treating on
sculpture, architecture, painting, book-making and so on.
Foremost among the various influences in the promotion
of geographical knowledge during the Middle Ages were
the crusades, — a movement whereby new travel-routes were
mapped out across southeastern Europe to the Holy Land,
and a fresh impulse given to the study of the heavens, —
of the stars, — main guide of crusader and pilgrim, and the
discovery of new plants, fruits, and grains, — needed for
forage and food for the armies. After the spread of Mo-
hametanism, as well known, the old-time pilgrim-routes to
ser, H., Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medizin, 1875, vol. i, p. 640.)
" He considers that the book has an historical value because it is an
independent German treatise based chiefly on popular experience, for
no writer except Isidor [sic] of Seville {>i> 636) is made use of in it.
In this connection it has been further commented on by Jessen. (les
sen, Sotowift der Gegenwart und Vorseit, 1864, pp. 120-127.) See Ecken
stein {ut sup.), p. 269, and 480, where she says St. Hildegard's book
" forms a landmark in the history of medieval medicine." The works
of St. Hildegard will be found in Migne's Patr. Lat., no. 197.
"Thus Joyce, {ut sup., i, 19,) in his characterization of Giraldus
Cambrensis.

25
the cradle-lands of the Faith in Asia Minor, in Palestine
and Egypt, were abandoned until new ones were opened by
the crusaders. With the crusade era there begins a long
line of travelers, missionaries, papal representatives, — all
tending eastward to Asia.
In the thirteenth century the Dominican friar, Simon of
St. Quentin, was sent by Pope Innocent IV to Persia; in
1245, the Franciscan friar, John of Pian del Carpine, a
hamlet near Perugia in Italy, an aged man of sixty-five
years left Lyons for Asia ; going thither he traveled through
eastern Europe, — through Bohemia, Poland, Russia, across
the Ural to Mongolia, then on to Karakorum, — camp of
the great Khan; in 1246, he was at Batu on the Volga, then
onward to China, — a two years' journey in all, having in
one of his venturesome trips gone three thousand miles
in a hundred and six days.
Then William Rubruquis, a Fleming, and friar of the
same order, who in his travels through Asia, drew up a
correct description of the Caspian Sea, returning home in
1255. And the Vivaldi brothers of Genoa, who in 1291
essayed a sea-road to India by sail around Africa, — a feat
not accomplished however until two centuries later by the
Portuguese Dias, who thus proved the falsity of the doc
trine held among others by Hipparchus and Ptolemy, that
the circumnavigation of Africa was impossible.
Marco Polo, another Genoese, who as had been done by
his father Nicolo and his uncle Maffeo, went to the extreme
east of Asia — to China, where he Femained seventeen years,
bringing back thence a planisphere, that perhaps inspired
the convent-bred scholar and physicist. Era Mauro, two
hundred years later in the construction of his map of the
world. Marco Polo, thus scholars commonly state, was the
first European who named Java; he visited Sumatra, which
he named Java Minor, i. e.. Lesser Java. He knew also
of Japan.

26
Other famed travelers of this period, wr^hich seems to
have been one of uncommon activity in all lines of human
genius, — it was the thirteenth century, — one of the most
brilliant and glorious in the history of the world, were
the brothers Nicolo and Antonio Zeno, Sir John Mande-
ville, Andrea of Perugia, and Cjiovanni Marignioli. Nor
should mention be omitted of John of Monte 'Cx>rvino, a
Franciscan, who from Europe went to the west coast of
India, as did also Friar Jordanus.
Between 1321 and 1328, Friar Odoric of Pordenone, an
Italian, with his companion, an Irishman named Friar
James, went to India, to the Malabar coast, then to the
southern confines of China, then again to Sumatra, Java,
Persia, Thibet, being the first European to enter the for
bidden city of Lhassa, and then again to Afganistan,' to
Cabul, and Tabriz, whence homewards to Venice.
But to return to our book-collections in Europe. Not
able among those of the fourteenth century was the convent
library of the Augustinians at York, in England, of which
the inventory is still extant, in Trinity College, DubHn,
made during the priorship of Father William de Stayntoun,
on the feast of our Lady's Nativity, in 1372, which com
prises among other works treatises on history, astronom,y,
medicine, astrology, music, geometry, perspective, with a
lot of astrological instruments, the property of Friar John
de Erghon."
Moreover among sharp incentives to travel by land and
sea, beside religion with its intellectual skill and industry,
were the weighty economic problems relating to the ma
terial necessities of life, — of food, especially of fish for the
fast-days of Christians. During medieval ages, it may be
observed, the custom maintained even well down into mod-
^'' The full book-list of this medieval English Augustinian library of
York is printed in "Notes and Queries," {ut sup., i, 83, 84).

27
em times was to keep three stated fasts of forty days a
year, commonly styled " Lents,"— the usual Lenten fast
before Easter, another right after Pentecost, and a third
before Christmas, sometimes styled St. Martin's Lent.^*
The Mediterranean and coast waters of Europe, that for
centuries had been almost sole source of fish supplies, were
no longer able to fill the market. Hence the ever-increas
ing and restless activity of seamen, — of Breton and English,
to explore the unknown wastes of the Atlantic, — the seas
and ocean west of Europe, — in search of fish haunts, es
pecially of ling, herring, and cod.
On old-time maps of the western world, of the North
American coast, are odd-looking names given to stretches
of land along what is now known as Labrador, — " the land
of the toiler," or " laborer," with neanby, the island of
" Stokafixia," as in Bianco's map of 1436 — an old name
maybe of Norse origin, signifying stock, — or cod-fish; then
not far away a sea-region though sometimes drawn as an
island known as " Baccalaos," another name for the same
fish, even yet so termed in south European countries.^"
28 Among the ordinances of the Carolingian age relating to the three
Lents, the following, presumably of the ninth century, prescribes : "Ut
jejunia tria legitima in anno agantur, id est quadraginta dies ante nativi-
tatem Domini, et quadraginta dies ante pascha, . . . et post pentecosten
— quadraginta dies" — usages or customs of the times that were to be
recognized (thus the injunction in the law itself, to wit:) "propter con-
suetudinem plebis et parentum nostrorum morem," etc. (See Statute
no. 187 in the Collection of Capitularies of Charlemagne by Benedict,
the Deacon {Levita), in Migne, Patr. Lat., no. 97, col. 770.)
2 9 For these old geographical terms of "Stokafixia" and "Bacca
laos," with their variants, see Winsor's Christopher Columbus, {ut sup.,
pp. 129, 340, 344,) and his Narr. and Crit. Hist, of America, (iii, 12).
In the latter-named work Mr. Winsor reproduces facsimiles of old
maps showing Baccalaos' land as follows : On Da Vinci's map of 1515-
1516, {id., ii, 126,) the island of "Bacalar"; on Orontius Fine's globe
of 1531. {id., iii, p. II,) the land of "Baccalar"; on a Mercator of
1541, {id., ii, 177,) the " Baccalearum Regio" — land of the cod; and on
Ramusio's of 1556, {id., ii, 228,) the land of " Bacalaos."

28
Foremost among these daring explorers of Atlantic wat
ers was Prince Henry of Portugal, " the Navigator," who
believed that by rounding Africa, might be opened a sea-
path to Arabia and India, but who succeeded only in un
veiling the African littoral as far as the Guinea coast. Yet
to him also is due the honor of establishing an astronomi
cal observatory and what perhaps is the first school, or
academy, of navigation, in modem times at least, which
was opened at Sagres in the southern part of Portugal, un
der the superintendency of the pilot and cosmographer,
Master Jayme of Majorca. During the lifetime of the
same scholarly and venturesome prince, in 1419, the Azores,
whither Bristol seamen were wont to go for trade or fish,
of which some had been discovered in 1351, were re-dis
covered; while the Madeira group, which had been charted
also in 1351, was opened to colonization in 1418-20. About
the same time too were colonized the Canaries, which are
the same as the " Isles of the West " of the Phoenicians,
the " Fortunate Isles " of Sertorius, and the " Hesperides "
of Pliny, which had been described too by the Arabian
geographer Edrisi in the twelfth century, and the traveler
Ibn-al-Wardi in the fourteenth. During the Middle Ages
especially in the famed Crusade period is noticeable a mar
velous intellectual growth among the followers of Mahomet,^
of sciences and industries, — in philosophy, mathematics,
chemistry, medicine, botany, architecture, commerce, — a
merely spasmodic or quasi-hysterical movement however as
usual among the children of unfaith, that in time waning as
must always be the case under the blight of unbelief lapsed
everyw'here in Europe, Asia and Africa into a most pitiable
state of semi-Jbarbarism, of political degradation, mental
torpor, religious apathy and decay.
While reversely and be this unvarying and necessarily
universal phenomenon ever and very stoutly kept in mind in
the Christian commonwealth, through the ever-uplifting in-^

29
fluence and energy of the Christian spirit will you see real
ized for good in steady progressive guise the all-round cul
ture of humanity in religion, jurisprudence, philanthropy as
well as the minor sciences and beauties and graces of life
individual or social. But to continue. In 1447, Cape
Verde was re-discovered by the Portuguese Gomez; and
in 1460 Sierra Leone in Africa.
Then, but considerably later in the fifteenth century, was
hailed the accomplishment, in part only however, of the
problem dreamed of by the ancients, though deemed im
possible by others, — the rounding of Africa by the Portu
guese Bartholomew Dias, who had been commissioned on
a voyage of discovery southward by King John II of Por
tugal, with hopes on his part among others, of entering the
domains of the famed yet mythical ruler " Prester John."
In i486, that daring sailor reached the southernmost point
of Africa, which because of the storms that barred his pas
sage further eastward and the immense billows that
threatened his three little cockle-shaped vessels, — ^they were
only of fifty-ton build, — he styled Cape of Torments, a
name however that King John, foreseeing the realization
of his long-sought passage to India, rechristened Cape of
Good Hope. Ten years or so after Dias, in 1497, Vasco
da Gama, another Portuguese navigator, succeeding in
rounding the Cape, went thence to India, to Calcutta, which
he reached a year later — in 1498, — an achievement where
by was revolutionized the commerce of the East, that for
so many centuries had been the monapoly of the Moslem.
Thus by the untiring efforts chiefly of Italian, Catalan,
Portuguese and Spaniard, by travelers, merchants, mission
aries from the West, was the mighty East with its marts
thrown open to traders, with multitudes of souls brought
therefore to the Faith of Christ.
Of the maps of the world, or parts of it, as of Europe,
yet extant, we believe, dating from the thirteenth to the six-

30
teenth centuries, some thirty-four in all are known to
scholars, — a mere remnant however of what must have
been a far greater number destroyed through wars, fires
and the neglect of men.""
Characteristic of these medieval maps, as alluded to
above, inheritance in part from classic times, are their pic
tures of mysterious odd-looking beings, very fantastic in
form, — of fabulous islands, cities, continents, some van
ishing, phantoms, the abodes of spirits both blessed and
damned, with land and sea peopled with strange creatures,.
some semi-human, others apparently semi-diabolical, yet
on the whole none groundless. Fanciful as are most of
these specimens of cartography, especially in their delinea
tion of countries, boundaries, rivers and the like, yet on the
whole, in consideration of their lack of scientific instru
ments, the map-makers, it should be said, have done their
work with remarkable skill and taste.
One of these artistic yet perishable monuments of science,
a Medicean atlas, of 1351, at Florence, represents the Cas
pian Sea and the whole of Africa. In 1306, Marino
Sanuto, of Pizignani, had represented South Africa as end
ing in a point, his map really being the beginning of
Atlantic cartography. But finest of all these samples of
old-time skill in map-making is the work of Era Mauro, a
Venetian, lay-brother in the convent of the Camaldolese
monks of San Michele at Murano, which he made at the
instance of Prince Henry, a patron of cartography, for
Alphonsus IV of Portugal. Therein Era Mauro, who
drew Africa as circumnavigable, with full maps of Europe,
Asia and Africa, incorporated the latest additions to geo-
"" All these maps are specified in the Ency. Brit. (art. " Map," xv,
525, 526). For valuable details relating to medieval travelers and early
cartographers, see art. "Geography," {ib., x, 159-162;) also in Winsor's
Narr. and Crit. Hist, the paper entitled " The Earliest Maps of the
Spanish and Portuguese Discoveries," (ii, 93-128;) and the caption
"Geography" in the Index in Fiske's Discovery, {ut sup., ii, 612).

31
graphical science as well as the results of the wanderings
of Marco Polo, John of Pian del Carpine, William Ru
bruquis and other medieval travelers. He mentions the
Isle of Ceylon, Russia, " Sibir," — Siberia in Asia, " Fil-
landia," — Finland, (north of Sweden,) and Java (thus
named by Polo) in the eastern Ocean.
But the map which is definitely associated with the views
which were developing in Columbus' mind, was the one
sent to him by Toscanelli, the Florentine physician, in 1474.
With this he studied also the Imago Mundi — the cosmo
graphy of the churchman, Peter d'Ailly, (de Alliaco) 1350-
1420, afterwards cardinal. Besides, it seems fairly estab
lished that he read the works of Ptolemy, Nearchus, Mari-
nus, Pliny, and the travels of Polo and de Mandeville.
Moreover during the fifteenth century the media for
scientific navigation were accumulating rapidly, as wit
nessed by the Borgia map — a bronze planisphere, which
shows the extent of geographical knowledge in that cen
tury — the terrestial globe of Martin Behaim still preserved
at Nuremberg, not having been made until 1492, — then the
calendars of Regiomontanus, (Johann Muller), which with
almanacs were made known to Spanish and Portuguese
navigators. In 1470, in Poland, was published the first
almanac, and three years later in London; these contained
tables of the sun's declination and that of many of the
stars, with tables for finding the latitude by the polar star
and the " pointers." In 1488, fifteen years after almanacs
were known in London, Bartholomew Columbus, a brother
of the discoverer, took to England a maj) — the first sea-
chart seen in that country, the first map of England not
being made until many years later, in 1520.
It was only in 1726, it may be noticed, that navigators
discovered the art of finding longitude by watches; while
the first nautical almanac was published only in 1769.
Worthy moreover of deep admiration is the fact that

32
these old-time explorations and voyages were accomplished
with the crudest of appliances for travel or navigation, with
no instruments of fine precision, ,with vessels of petty ton
nage, of unwieldy build, ill-fitted to cope with oceanic
perils, with but few other instruments for navigation than
a sea-card and a compass of exceedingly faulty make, —
the only instruments employed by navigators up to Be-
haim's time, who invented the application of the astrolabe,
or cross-staff, to purposes of navigation, (this in 1480,)
the latter of which, be it noted, was used by Da Gama and
Columbus. These with occasionally tables for the sun's
declination, and the altitude of the polar star, and faulty
charts, were about the only instruments prescribed for
Spanish navigators.
Until 1610, when Galileo discovered another method,
the only observations employed by mariners for finding
longitude were those of eclipses of the moon. Nor again
until 1670 was there any means of measuring a ship's prog
ress through the water.
Until about the beginning of the nineteenth century no
improvements were made in nautical instruments except
the magnetic needle.
But besides map-makers there were scholars of high
scientific attainments, of whom deservedly celebrated is
Nicholas de Cusa (1401-1464), a churchman, subsequently
raised to the cardinalship, jurist and scholar, who antici
pated Copernicus,"^ another Roman churchman, physician,
'1 In view of the spirit of modern scholarship, the thoroughness of
research into the treasures of medieval and ancient sources of history,
and the immense mass of material relating thereto in libraries, archives
and museums, it is strange indeed that we are yet fated to encounter
in works even professedly by expert historians the "old women's tale"
(so often confuted) of "the condemnation by the Church of the theory
of Copernicus," the famous astronomer, physician and cleric, (thus
among other fiction-weavers the Ency. Brit., xx, 145,) not one of whose
principles of natural physics, it should be maintained, ever was con
demned by Mother Church.

33
astronomer and physicist, by his two theories relating to
the globe, one, reviving the Pythagorean hypothesis, i. e.,
that the sun is centre of the planetary system, with the
earth as one of its satellites, thereby overturning the Ptole
maic doctrine, — the belief of many centuries, of the geo
centric character of the earth.
Among the ancient heathens the heliocentric theory had
been taught by Philolaus of Crotona, Archimedes and
Pythagoras in private ; for in public he maintained the geo
centric hypothesis, that the earth was centre of the plane
tary system, which was upheld by Apollonius of Perga, and
the chief Pythagorean philosophers, among others by
Philolaus of Crotona. (By what peculiar theory of ethics,
of scientific casuistry, Pythagoras could attempt to justify,
if at all, his teaching such contradictory systems as the
heliocentric and geocentric, the world is not informed.)
By his other theory de Cusa maintained the fact of the
mobility of the earth (on its own axis) and its rotation
around the sun — a theory that was completely established
by Copernicus, (1473-1543), who reformed the system of
astronomy — the result of which was the complete overthrow
of the Ptolemaic hypothesis.
Another occasion of marvel at the knowledge displayed
ages ago is the fact that while printing was yet in its in
fancy, very few works comparatively having been issued
from the press in the fifteenth century, and these moreover
in only small editions, yet among them were many works
on natural science, on geography, cosmography, besides
charts, atlases, and the like, all published in Italy, some on
presses in Rome itself, chief city of the Supreme Pontiffs,
and — be this most stoutly maintained — all with full Church
approbation. Briefly these incunabula were as follows: Pliny's Na
tural History, published at Venice, in 1469; Strabo's Geo
graphy, which by command of Pope Nicholas V had been

34
turned into Latin by the Veronese scholar Guarino, was
pubHshed in Vicenza in 1469, then again in 1471 ; and
probably in 1482. To Guarino (1370-1460), who had
translated also from the Greek many of the lives of Plu
tarch, only the first ten books of the Latin Strabo are due,
the remaining ones having been done by Gregorio of Citta
di Castello. Such was the demand for this Latin version,
that thirteen editions were issued, the first (as said) in
1469, the last in 1652. Then Pomponius Mela, the Span
ish geographer, whose work De Situ Orbis was printed
first at Milan, in 1471, with other editions at Venice; Ma
crobius, at Venice, in 1472 ; Solinus at Rome and at Venice,
about 1473, (twoi editions in the same year;) Ptolemy's
Atlas (with other works) first printed at Rome, in 1478;
(it contains ten maps of Europe; four of Africa; and
twelve of Asia;) Pliny again printed at Parma, in 1481^
where another edition issued six years later (in 1487) ;
and Avienus' Descriptio Orbis Terrae, at Venice, in 1488.""
So far we have skimmed, though lightly, over the various
different realms of the cosmos of God, — the earth, chiefly,
whereon since the genesis of mankind have been displayed
in their full synthetic grandeur and delicacy as well as
analytic richness, the leading norms and phenomena of
the ethical, esthetic and mere physical domains of the spirit-
world and the world of matter, whether in earthly, human
or divine guise. For in all cosmic study, geography in
cluded, the artistic spirit of man, if keenly sharpened by
nature and grace, cannot but discern as interrelated through
the Divine art-spirit all the phenomena of artistic energy,
especially, — of inspiration, of beauty, of gracefulness, or
what-not perfection. Since in all cosmos, — in the earth,
the heavens, the seas, the scientific mind cannot but view as
*2 The bibliography of the incunabula named in the text from divers
sources apart from the works themselves, as encyclopedias, especially
the Britannica.

35
closely, nay even as more or less intimately co-ordinated to
wards God, all phenomena relating to spirit, to man, to
beast, to plant, to mineral.
But to conclude. Briefly then we have told of a long
series of explorations, voyages, travels, from the dawn of
Christianity to the discovery of the Western World in
1492; we have spoken of libraries, of books in many edi
tions, of writers on geographical topics, some of them
cardinals of Holy Church, of bookmakers, cartographers,
and makers of globes, road-maps and atlases; have named
travelers — churchmen, laymen, who by land and sea visited
every quarter of Europe, traveled to the extremes of Asia,
including even some of the Pacific Islands, sailed clear
round Africa and explored the wastes of the Polar Sea and
the coast waters of the great Western Continent, later
known as America.
Less than a generation after the discovery of the New
World of America by the Italian Columbus, the Portuguese
Magellan, we may add, first of all navigators, completed
his passage around the southernmost point of the American
continent, on Wednesday, November 28, 1520, through the
straits bearing his name, and thence homeward bound
across the Pacific was the first sailor of record, to encircle
the globe.
From our survey of the course and amount of geogra
phical knowledge down to the discovery of America, we
may also conclude that scholars, travelers, navigators, were
well acquainted with the main principles that underlie geo
graphical science, were familiar too with the chief char
acteristics of terrestial and celestial phenomena — the shape
and size of the earth; the distribution of peoples, of races
of men; of various kinds of food-products, of fruits and
plants, of beasts and fishes; and the main divisions of the
earth's surface at least in the eastern hemisphere.

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