GEOGRAPHY
448
GEOGRAPHY
pose of the scientific discoverer, could not have been
more wisely selected in the conditions then prevalent.
Then followed the foundation of monasteries in the
British Isles which sent out in all directions their
monks, well equipped with learning and well fitted to
become the pioneers of culture. To these missionaries
we owe the earliest geographical accounts of the
northern countries and of the customs, religions, and
languages of their inhabitants. They had to define
the boundaries of the newly established dioceses of
the Church. Their notes, therefore, contained the
most valuable information, though the form was
somewhat crude, and Ritter very justly traces the
source and beginning of modern geography in these
regions back to the "Acta Sanctorum". The world
is indebted to the diaries of St. Ansgar (d. 865) for the
first description of Scandinavia. The material in
them was employed later on by Adam of Bremen in
his celebrated work " De situ Danise". The accounts
of these countries that Archbishop Axel of Lund (d.
1201), the founder of Copenhagen, furnished to the
historian Saxo Grammatieus were also of great value.
Reports brought in by monks enabled Alfred the
Great (901) to compile the first description of Sla-
vonic lands. Then followed the Chronicle of Regino
of Priim (907-908) — a work equally important for the
historian and the geographer, as it contains the reports
of St. Adalbert, who made his way into Russia in 961.
Of similar merit are the historical works of the monk
Nestor of Kiev (d. 1100) and the country pastor Hel-
mold (d. 1170). Bishops Thietmar of Merseburg (d.
1019) and Vincent Kadlubeck of Cracow (1200-18)
bring us the earliest information regarding the geog-
raphy of Poland, while the letters of Bishop Otto of
Bamberg contain the earliest description of Pom-
erania. In like manner the geography of Prussia,
Finland, Lapland, and Lithuania begins with the evan-
gelization of these countries. And even if it be diffi-
cult to-day to estimate at their proper value the dis-
covery of these regions, now so familiar to us, the first
voyages of civilized Europeans on the high seas,
which started from Ireland, will always challenge our
admiration. Groping from island to island, the Irish
monks reached the Faroe Isles in the seventh century
and Iceland in the eighth. They thus showed the
Northmen the route which was to bring about the first
communication between Europe and America, and
finally set foot on Greenland (1112). The earliest ac-
counts of these settlements, with which, owing to un-
propitious political and physical conditions, perma-
nent intercourse could not be maintained, we owe to
Canon Adam of Bremen, to the reports sent by the
bishops to their metropolis at Drontheim (Trondhjem),
and to the Vatican archives.
Meanwhile, communication with the East had never cea.sed. Palestine was anobjectof interest toall Chris- tendom, to which the eyes of the West had been turned ever since the days of the Apostles. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims flocked thither in bands. Not a few of them possessed sufficient ability to describe in- telligently their experiences and impressions. Thus the so-called "Itineraries", or guide-books, by no means confined themselves tx3 a description of the Sa- cred Places. Besides giving exact directions for the route, they embraced a great deal of information about the neighbouring countries and peoples, about Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and even India. These works were very popular reading and undoubt^ edly infused an entirely new element into the study of geography in those days. A still greater stimulus was given to it by the Crusades — those magnificent expeditions which, inspired and supported by the Church, brought huge masses of people into contact with the Orient. They made a knowledge of the lands they sought to conquer, a commonplace in Europe. They were the means of spreading the geographic theories and methods of Arabian scholarship, at that
time quite advanced, thereby placing the research of
Western scholars on entirely new bases, and putting
before them new aims and objects. Finally, in the
elTort to secure new allies for the liberation of the
Holy Land, they brought about intercourse with the
rulers of Central Asia. This intercourse was of the
utmost importance in the history of medieval discov-
eries.
Stray communities of Christians were scattered throughout the interior of Asia, even in the early cen- turies, thanks to the zeal of the Nestorians. It is true that they were separated from Rome and were sup- pressed by rigorous persecutions in China as early as the eighth century. But even during the Crusades some Mongolian tribes showed such familiarity with the new faith that the popes had great hopes of an alliance with these nations. The general council held at Lyons in 1245 under Innocent IV decided to send out legates. Men duly qualified for these missions were found among the newly established Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. The Dominican Ascalinus in 1245 reached the court of the Khan of Persia on the eastern shore of the Black Sea after a voyage of fifty- nine days, but his errand was fruitless. His compan- ion, Simon of St-Quentin, wrote an account of the voyage, as did also his great contemporary, Vincent of Beauvais. The enterprises of the Franciscans were politically more successful, and far more productive of scientific results. Under the leadership of John de Piano Carpini of Perugia, they travelled through Ger- many, Bohemia, Poland, and Southern Russia as far as the Volga, and thence to the Court of the Grand Khan at Karakonun (1246). Their reports embrace the political conditions, ethnography, history, and geography of the Tatar lands. They were excellently supplemented by Friar Benedict of Poland of the same order in regard to the Slav countries. Both these works, however, are surpassed by the Franciscan William Rubruck (Rubruquis) of Brabant, whose report Peschel pronounces to be "the greatest geographical masterpiece of the Middle Ages ". He was the first to settle the controversy between medieval geographers as to the Caspian Sea. He ascertained that it was an inland lake and had not, as was supposed for a long while, an outlet into the Arctic Ocean. He was the first Christian geographer to bring back reliable in- formation concerning the position of China and its in- habitants. He knew the ethnographic relations of the Hungarians, Bashkirs, and Huns. He knew of the remains of the Gothic tongue on the Tauric Cherso- nese, and recognized the differences between the char- acters of the different Jlongolian alphabets. The glowing pictures he drew of the wealth of Asia first at- tracted the attention of the seafaring Venetians and Genoese to the East. Mercliants followed in the path he had pointed out, among them Marco Polo, the most renowned traveller of all times. His book describing his journeys was for centuries the sole source of knowl- edge for the geographical and cartographical represen- tations of Asia. Side by side with Marco Polo, friars and monks pursued untiringly the work of discovery. Among them was Hayton, Prince of Annania (Ar- menia), afterwards Abbot of Poitiers, who in 1307 made the first attempt at a systematic geography of Asia in his "Historia orientalis". Also the Francis- cans stationed in India w'ho followed the more con- venient sea route to China at the end of the thirteenth century. Special credit is due to John of Monte Cor- vino (1291-1328), Odoric of Pordenone (1.317-31), whose work was widely circulated in the writings of John Mandeville, and John of MarignoUa. Of India, also, the missionaries gave fuller information. Menen- tillus was the first to prove the peninsular shape of the country and, in contradiction to Ptolemy, de- scribed tlic Indian Ocean as a body of water open to the South. The Dominican Jordanus Catalani (1328) records his observations on the physical peculiarities
