Sarah Castille Against The Ropes Epub 58
Angie Troia
his volume aims at giving an account, based throughout upon originalsources, of the progress of geographical knowledge and enterprise inChristendom throughout the Middle Ages, down to the middle or even theend of the fifteenth century, as well as a life of Prince Henry theNavigator, who brought this movement of European Expansion within sightof its greatest successes. That is, as explained in Chapter I., it hasbeen attempted to treat Exploration as one continuous thread in thestory of Christian Europe from the time of the conversion of the Empire;and to treat the life of Prince Henry as the turning-point, the centralepoch in a development of many centuries: this life, accordingly, hasbeen linked as closely as possible with what went before and preparedfor it; one third of the text, at least, has been occupied with thehistory of the preparation of the earlier time, and the differencebetween our account of the eleventh-and fifteenth-century Discovery, forinstance, will be found to be chiefly one of less and greater detail.This difference depends, of course, on the prominence in the[Pg xviii] later timeof a figure of extraordinary interest and force, who is the true hero inthe drama of the Geographical Conquest of the Outer World that startsfrom Western Christendom. The interest that centres round Henry issomewhat clouded by the dearth of complete knowledge of his life; butenough remains to make something of the picture of a hero, both ofscience and of action.
Our subject, then, has been strictly historical, but a history in whicha certain life, a certain biographical centre, becomes more and moreimportant, till from its completed achievement we get our best outlookupon the past progress of a thousand years, on this side, and upon thefuture progress of those generations which realised the next greatvictories of geographical advance.
The series of maps which illustrate this account, give the samecontinuous view of the geographical development of Europe andChristendom down to the end of Prince Henry's age. These are, it isbelieved, the first English reproductions in any accessible form ofseveral of the great charts of the Middle Ages, and taken together theywill give, it is hoped, the best view of Western or Christian map-makingbefore the time of Columbus that is to be found in any English book,outside the great historical atlases.
I. As to the former, they are meant to show in[Pg xxii] an historical successionthe course of geographical advance in Christendom down to the death ofPrince Henry (1460). Setting aside the Ptolemy, which represents theknowledge of the world at its height in the pre-Christian civilisation,and the Edrisi which represents the Arabic followers of Ptolemy, whoseinfluence upon early Christian geography was very marked, all the mapsreproduced belong to the science of the Christian ages and countries.The two Mappe-mondes above referred to are both placed in theintroductory chapter, and are treated only as the most importantexamples of the science which the Grco-Roman Empire bequeathed toChristendom, but which between the seventh and thirteenth centuries waschiefly worked upon by the Arabs. Among early Christian maps, that ofSt. Sever, possibly of the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxon map of thetenth century, the Turin Map of the eleventh, and the Spanish map of thetwelfth (1109), represent very crude and simple types of sketches of theworld, in which within a square or oblong surrounded by the ocean a fewprominent features only, such as the main divisions of countries, areattempted. The Anglo-Saxon example, though greatly superior to theothers given here, essentially belongs to this kind of work, where somelittle truth is preserved by a happy ignorance of the travellers' talesthat came into fashion later, but where there is only the vaguest andmost general knowledge of geographical facts.
Dulcert's portolano of 1339 and the Laurentian of 1351 are two of thebest examples of this kind of work, which gave us our first reallyaccurate map of any part of the globe, but which for some time wasentirely confined to coast drawing, and was meant to supply thepractical wants of captains, pilots, and seamen. The Catalan atlas of1375-6 shows the portolano type extended to a real Mappa Mundi; theelaborate carefulness and sumptuousness of this example prepares us forthe still higher work of Andrea Bianco and of Benincasa in the fifteenthcentury. As the Laurentian portolano of 1351 commemorates the voyage of1341 and marks its discoveries in the Atlantic islands, so the Catalanmap of 1375-6 commemorates the Catalan voyage of 1346, and gives thebest and most up-to-date picture of the N.W. African coast as it wasknown before Prince Henry's discoveries.[Pg xxiv]
The Borgian map of 1450 is given as an extraordinary specimen of whatcould be done as late as 1450, not as an example of geographicalprogress; and the map of 1492, recording Portuguese discoveries down tothe rounding of the Cape of Good Hope, is added to illustrate theadvance of explorers in the years closely following Henry's death, as itwas realised at the time.
Mr. T.A. Archer, besides the benefit of his suggestions throughout, hasgiven special aid in Chapters I., III., V., and the IntroductoryChapter, especially where anything is said of the connection ofgeographical progress with the Crusades.[7]
As to the illustrations, of portraits and monuments, etc., I amespecially obliged to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (Dr.Boyd), who has allowed his water-colour paintings of Portuguese subjectsto be reproduced; and to the Rev. R. Livingstone of Pembroke, and SirJohn Hawkins of Oriel, for their loan of photographs.[Pg xxviii]
rabic science constitutes one of the main links between the olderlearned world of the Greeks and Latins and the Europe of Henry theNavigator and of the Renaissance. In geography it adopted in the mainthe results of Ptolemy and Strabo; and many of the Moslem travellers andwriters gained some additional hints from Indian, Persian, and Chineseknowledge; but, however much of fact they added to Greek cartography,they did not venture to correct its postulates.[Pg 2]
And what were these postulates? In part, they were the assumptions ofmodern draughtsmen, but in some important details they differed. Andfirst, as to agreement. Three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, anencircling ocean, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and Caspian, the RedSea and Persian Gulf, the South Asiatic, and North and West Europeancoasts were indicated with more or less precision in the science of theAntonines and even of Hannibal's age. Similarly, the Nile and Danube,Euphrates and Tigris, Indus and Ganges, Jaxartes and Oxus, Rhine andEbro, Don and Volga, with the chief mountain ranges of Europe andWestern Asia, find themselves pretty much in their right places inStrabo's description, and are still better placed in the great chart ofPtolemy. The countries and nations from China to Spain are arranged inthe order of modern knowledge. But the differences were fundamentalalso. Never was there a clearer outrunning of knowledge by theory,science by conjecture, than in Ptolemy's scheme of the world (c. a.d.130). His chief predecessors, Eratosthenes and Strabo, had left muchblank space in their charts, and had made many mistakes in detail, butthey had caught the main features of the Old World with fair accuracy.Ptolemy, in trying to fill up what he did not know from his innerconsciousness, evolved a parody of those features. His map, from itsintricate falsehood, backed as it was by the greatest name ingeographical science, paralysed all real enlargement of knowledge tillmen began to question, not only his facts, but his theories. And[Pg 3] asall modern science, in fact, followed the progress of world-knowledge,or "geography," we may see how important it was for this revolution totake place, for Ptolemy to be dethroned.
The Arabs, commanding most of the centres of ancient learning (Ptolemy'sown Alexandria above all), riveted the pseudo-science of theirpredecessors on the learned world, along with the genuine knowledgewhich they handed down from the Greeks. In many details they correctedand amplified the Greek results. But most of their geographical theorieswere mere reproductions of Ptolemy's, and to his mistakes they addedwilder though less important confusions or inventions of their own. Theresult of all this, by the tenth century a.d., was a geography, basednot on knowledge, but on ideas of symmetry. It was a scheme fit for theArabian Nights.
Thus all the problems of ancient geography were explained: wherePtolemy's knowledge failed him altogether, no Western of that time hadever been, or was likely to go. The whole realised and unrealised worldwas described with such clearness and consistency, men thought, thatwhat was lacking in Aristotle was now supplied.
Yet it is worth while observing how, centuries before Ptolemy, in theages nearer to Aristotle himself, the geography of Eratosthenes andStrabo, by a more balanced use of knowledge and by a greater restraintof fancy, had composed a far more reliable chart.[9]
This earlier and discredited map avoided all the more seriousperversions of Ptolemy. Africa was cut off at the limit of actualknowledge, about Cape Non on the west and Cape Guardafui on the east;and the "Cinnamon-bearing Coast," between these points, was fringed bythe Mountains of thiopia, where the Nile rose. This was the theorywhich[Pg 6] revived on the decline of the Ptolemaic, and which encouraged thePortuguese sailors with hopes of a quick approach to India round Africa,as the great eastern bend of the Guinea coast seemed to suggest.Further, on this pre-Ptolemaic map the Southern Ocean was left untouchedby a supposed Southern Continent, and except for an undue shrinkage ofthe Old World in general as an island in the midst of the vastsurrounding ocean, a reliable description of Western Asia and CentralEurope and North Africa was in the hands of the learned world twohundred years before Christ.
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