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The History of Civilization 
 Edited by C. K. Ocpen, M.A. 
 
 Travel and Travellers of the 
 
 Middle Ages 
 
The History of Civilization 
 
 In the Section of this Series devoted to PRR-HISTORY AND ANTIQUITY are 
 included the following volumes :— 
 
 I. Introduction and Pre-History 
 
 *SOCIAL ORGANIZATION . ; ; : : : W.H. R, Rivers 
 THE FarTH BeroreE History : : : ; ‘ FE, Perrier 
 PREHISTORIC MAN . : : ; ; : : . J. de Morgan 
 LANGUAGE: A LINGUISTIC INTRODUCTION TO HisToRY . J. Vendryes 
 A GEOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION To HISTORY. . : L. Febvre 
 RACE AND HISTORY : : : ; é ; . FE, Pittard 
 FrRoM CLAN TO EMPIRE ; ; : 3 ; ; A. Moret 
 
 *\WOMAN’S PLACE IN SIMPLE SOCIETIES : : . J. L. Myres 
 
 *CYCLES IN HISTORY : ; , ; ‘ ci) Jala res 
 
 “THE DIFFUSION OF CULTURE . ; = : ; . G, Elliot Smith 
 
 *THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS . ‘ : : : D. A, Mackenzie 
 
 *THE DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION . ; ni  UVSeG. Childe 
 
 *THE ARYANS : ; : : ‘ : : Ve Ge Cinlge 
 
 II. The Early Empires 
 THE NILE AND EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. : : : A. Moret 
 
 *COLOUR SYMBOLISM OF ANCIENT EGyrT . : ; D. A. Mackenzie 
 MESOPOTAMIA : : : ‘ ; d ; . L, Delaporte 
 THE AZGEAN CIVILIZATION 5 : : ‘ ; : G. Glotz 
 
 In the Section of this Series devoted to CHRISTIANITY AND THE MIDDLE 
 Aces are included the following volumes :— 
 
 VI. Social and Economic Evolution 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL AND TOWN LIFE : : G, Bourgin 
 MARITIME TRADE AND THE MERCHANT GILDs ; P. Boissonnade 
 *LIFE AND WORK IN THE MIDDLE AGES : 7 P. Boissonnade 
 *THE Lire OF WOMEN IN MEDIEVAL TIMES . ; Eileen Power 
 
 *TRAVEL AND TRAVELLERS OF THE MippLE Aces. (Ed.) A. P. Newton 
 
 * An asterisk indicates that the volume does not form part of the French collection 
 ‘*L’Evolution de l’ Humanité,”’ 
 
 A full list of the Series will be found at the end of this volume. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive _ 
 in 2022 with funding from | 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/traveltravellersOOnewt 
 
septime figura. 
 apontes ferait.riiit capirujog plariby alife pro binifiorie terre in tres partes. ( 
 icer pro diftincrione merie ec qooradem Flaming at trgtohs bic gis erempli pofro 
 gan quis porticalsrior piftinctio meioré figura requinic. ere mediterranea exit ab 
 eceano per Hrictum meat rirca bifpania prope gates . AD are vercyubed trie 
 aboceano Circe medi crigtisg meridict i eft verfus merldié circe media orittie aad 
 Vetttis A coles litore Vis in ano terminus indict ocean nevfgetione stuingicur. 
 Sore fepterrioar. 
 
 ~_Pptorti Bripdt 
 
 dlista bfppo Cintas | grins. “Regio mhabi * 
 1§ mfcgobicstSeo4t “Rocheuis tebit potter elgoré 
 falesotiné=4 A pSt bic oud. AW6tee riptei 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fo Lgerie yg boi, @pxad ea ; oo, >. 
 ry s Roma za Gilide —_y5ce0 arene “Pe < 
 a, ’ oe Eurand "Roos Brs3 2 Armenio 4 a 
 a eel ao 
 Caw medismancdt@ ed Bleraorie ] mm Zoo 3 ; 
 Yh, 2 £2 blatolt eurepaeb affrice ‘Libla eg 3 5 fl ta Ye y = ma 
 iy” .s BD & Larcago | pad pofpen Se SO 
 ry : tens cancrr Sia 
 + § alfrica 2242 [fro OO be a3 
 Eiptrics Gara Trogovice Dubio ee, 
 Mone atblav mites os Aig Mderdé i{ » HD bitstio clephied 
 32a P . 
 as 3. rape SAGE pte tre bebite 
 RS dtinetsd fy merivié fe ercz 
 
 EGnoc | cialis 
 
 An liatadly eqnoctialé rvlers motes hitatoes: 2. 
 Stings Vt ex Dilkofiforsuteticis 5 pertum ctf a 
 
 Cropicas capricornt 
 
 Ctrelue-! Itarticg 
 
 polvs auftralis. 
 THE HABITABLE WORLD ACCORDING TO CARDINAL PIERRE D’AILLY, 1410. 
 
Seventh Figure. 
 
 This figure serves the xiiijth chapter and many others for the division of the earth into three parts and 
 likewise for the distinguishing of the sea and of certain rivers and regions here set down by way of example 
 because more particular distinction requires a larger figure. The Mediterranean Sea goes out from the 
 ocean by the narrow strait of Hercules round Spain near Gades. The Red Sea indeed goes out from 
 the ocean about the middle of the south-east, that is towards the south about midway between east and 
 west. By the shore of which [sea] the end of the Indian ocean is scarcely reached in a year’s Sailing. 
 
 Polus Septentrionalis 
 
 Yperborei | Arumphi 
 
 COI SITICIS O1 Arctic 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Gi rcle Hegion uninhabitable 
 
 
 
 
 ho, y ebicapeds Jowards the 
 
 fe contain many awellind- é 
 
 Vaces in the saltsea hick ¥ R U t h @nid on account of the cokd, 
 cannothere be contained. Ru phea n Mountain s 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Francia 
 
 Liguria 
 
 
 
 q Mediterranean Sea unto Asia 
 f and divides Lurope trom Aftrica 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cartago 
 
 AFFRICA 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Esperides Gara- Trogoditae N UL PSTP 7; 
 oO welling place 
 It MonsAthlas -montes Ethiopia Meroe 5 Ce sys nats 
 Bae 5 
 > Na N < R Jadia contains nearly a third part of the 
 S 8 Lee habitable land and extends towards the south 
 
 Equinoctialis 
 The Anti-chimate towards the fquator and beyond contains go 
 
 mary dwelling-places as appears trom authenhe histories 
 
 Tropicus Capricorni 
 
 Antarctic Circle 
 
 Polus Australis 
 
\ OF PRixa 
 <u “75 
 
 
 
 
 Bs OCT 9- 1928 
 We < 
 Logica gw 
 
 Travel and Travellers 
 of the Middle Ages 
 
 Edited by 
 
 ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON 
 Dig, LAT eee) Becks 
 Rhodes Professor of Imperial History tn the University of London 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF 
 1926 
 
Printed in Great Britain by Stephen Austin & Sons, Ltd., Hertford. 
 
 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE 
 CHAP. 
 I. InTRODUCTION—THE CONCEPTION OF THE 
 
 WorLD IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 By Professor Arthur Percival Newton: 
 M.A,, D.Lit., B.Se., F.S.A., Rhodes 
 Professor of Tinperial History in the 
 University of London 
 II. Tur Decay oF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 
 AND THE DECLINE OF EXPLORATION, 
 A.D. 800-500 
 By M. L. W. Paenten M.A., Bebtessh 
 of Ancient History in Cornell Dinigersttes 
 N.Y., lately Reader in Ancient History 
 in the University of London 
 III. Curist1AaN PILGRIMAGES, A.D. 500-800 
 By the Rev. Claude Jenkins, D.D., 
 F.S.A., Professor of Ecclesiastical 
 History, King’s College, London ; 
 Lambeth Librarian 
 IV. THE VIKING AGE 
 By Professor Alan Mae er. .M. ne mak 
 fessor of English Language and Slivitel ares 
 in the University of Liverpool 
 
 V. ARAB ‘TRAVELLERS AND #£IMERCHANTS, 
 A.D. 1000-1500 
 By Sir T. W. Arnold, C. i E., Litt, D., 
 Professor of Arabic in the University of 
 London 
 VI. TRADE AND COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN 
 EUROPE, A.D. 800—1200 
 By Baron A. F. Meyendorff, hevaer 
 in Russian Laws and Institutions in the 
 University of London 
 
 PAGE 
 
 19 
 
 89 
 
 70 
 
 88 
 
 104 
 
v1 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 VII. Tue OPENING OF THE LAND ROUTES TO 
 CATHAY : : : : ; 
 
 By Eileen Power, M.A., D.Lit., 
 
 Reader in Medieval Economic History 
 
 in the University of London 
 
 VIII. (i) ‘“ TRAVELLERS’ TALES ” oF WONDER AND 
 IMAGINATION 
 (ii) EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS IN AFRICA IN 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES : ; , 
 By Professor Arthur Percival Newton 
 
 IX. PresTER JOHN AND THE EMPIRE OF 
 ETHIOPIA , : ; Arey 
 By Sir E. Denison Ross, C.I.E., Ph.D., 
 Professor of Persian in the University 
 of London, Director of the School of 
 
 Oriental Studies 
 
 X. THE SEARCH FOR THE SEA Route To INDIA 
 
 By Professor Edgar Prestage, D.Litt., 
 Camoens Professor of Portuguese in the 
 University of London 
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 124 
 
 159 
 
 174 
 
 195 
 
 217 
 
His oOP LECUS ERATIONS 
 
 The Habitable World sae si to Cardinal Pierre 
 
 d’Ailly, 1410 ; 2 . Frontispiece 
 The Gokstad Ship : é to face page 76 
 Trade Routes and Travellers’ Journeys between 
 
 Europe and Cathay (1245-1345) 128 
 Hulagu, Conqueror of tear and first Ilkhan of 
 
 Persia . : : E 138 
 Prester John, Lord of Greater India and Ethiopia 178 
 Altar Piece of Nuno Gongalvez in the Cathedral of 
 
 Lisbon, I ; ; : . $ : 200 
 Altar Piece of Nuno Gongalvez in the Cathedral of 
 
 Lisbon, IT PAN Gel 
 

 
PREEACE 
 
 HE substance of the contributions here collected was 
 comprised in a course of Public Lectures in the Depart- 
 ments of History and Geography in King’s College, 
 London, delivered in the Lent Term of 1925. Several 
 of the contributions have been re-written and amplified 
 with material that could not be included in the lectures, 
 and I have added an entirely fresh chapter, but the book 
 does not profess to be a complete survey of the fascinating 
 field of which it treats. Those who are moved to explore 
 further by the glimpses that alone are here revealed must 
 betake themselves to the authorities that are mentioned in our 
 footnotes and especially to the scholarly pages of Professor 
 C. R. Beazley, Sir Henry Yule, M. Henri Cordier, and 
 M. Ch. Schéfer. There they will find the full apparatus of maps 
 and documents wherewith alone can justice be done to the 
 ideas and achievements of medieval geographers. This 
 brief conspectus of certain aspects of the subject may, how- 
 ever, be of interest to the general reader, summarizing as it 
 does some of the more recent work done in the field, and it 
 will be of value to the increasing number of students in 
 English and American universities who, as a part of their 
 geographical courses, are concerning themselves with the 
 history of travel. 
 
 My warm thanks are due to the collaborators who have 
 accepted so kindly my suggestions of subjects for treat- 
 ment, and have facilitated my task in every way. For the 
 planning and arrangement of the book I alone must accept 
 responsibility. 
 
 ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, 
 Kina@’s COLLEGE. 
 3rd December, 1925. 
 

 
CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTION : THE CONCEPTION OF THE WORLD IN THE 
 MIDDLE AGES 
 
 By Professor ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON, M.A., D.Lir., B.Sc., F.S.A. 
 
 Oita essays here collected have been arranged to show 
 something of the way in which the men of the Latin 
 West—-in the course of a thousand years—gradually modified 
 their conceptions of the physical world in which they lived. 
 These conceptions differed widely from those of the Ancients, 
 though they derivead many of their components from the 
 ideas of Classical times. They also differed from those formed 
 on a wider base of knowledge in subsequent centuries, but 
 they have contributed much to our everyday phraseology 
 and to the imagery of our poets. While rejecting the ideas 
 of medieval men, we have kept their names and phrases. 
 Many of them are very persistent, but they have quite changed 
 their meaning. At one time they were accurate descriptions 
 of what men thought about the world, and might form the 
 basis of argument. To-day they are mere poetic figures. 
 
 The contributions are arranged in roughly chronological 
 order, and each discusses in some detail the concepts of the 
 world and the conditions of travel and exploration of a 
 particular period or associated with particular sources of ideas 
 which have made material additions to the development 
 of thought and knowledge. 
 
 The thousand years between the break-up of the ancient 
 world and the period of the great discoveries of the late 
 fifteenth and early sixteenth century falls in this, as in 
 many other respects, into three main periods. The first 
 stretches from the sixth to the eleventh century and 
 is marked by the loss of the ancient scientific concepts 
 of the world and their replacement by uncritical cosmogonies, 
 based largely upon the crude ideas of the Hebrews as set 
 out in the Scriptures. It can hardly be claimed that in this 
 period there was any conception of the world generally held 
 
 B 
 
2 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 among educated and thinking men. Almost every writer 
 who deals with cosmogony interprets the Scriptural phrases 
 in his own way, and only the very ablest, like the Venerable 
 Bede, who still were familiar with the remains of ancient 
 learning, give us anything that remotely corresponds with 
 reality. The second period includes the time from about 
 A.D. 1000 to the beginning of the fourteenth century. It 
 is the period of the Crusades, a time of rapid development 
 in the realm of ideas and of critical power, as well as in 
 material achievement. Men are no longer wholly dependent 
 for their conceptions upon the Scriptures and a trickle of little 
 understood survivals from the ancients. They can drink 
 at the founts of Greek and Roman knowledge through new 
 channels. Arabic thought and learning greatly influence 
 them. Immense results flowed thence, and the time is 
 marked not only by great advance in the sphere of thought 
 and scientific criticism, but also by a large extension of ex- 
 ploration and a growth in practical knowledge of the land- 
 mass of Eurasia such as had never been possessed even in 
 ancient times. Alongside, but flowing in a separate stream, 
 were the achievements of the men of the North. Their 
 practical accomplishment was astonishing, but its influence 
 upon the development of European thought was compara- 
 tively slight and indirect. It was not until a very much later 
 age that the travels of the Vikings became known throughout 
 Western Europe, and their story is rather an appendix 
 to our main theme than an integral part of it. 
 
 The third and culminating period of the Middle Age 
 includes the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a period 
 of great practical achievement. It was marked not only 
 by a more systematic shaping of the typical medieval ideas, 
 but also by immense improvements in navigation and the 
 means of maritime exploration. These two lines of develop- 
 ment, the theoretical and the practical, gradually approached 
 one another, and the second absorbed or replaced the first. 
 
 For the earlier Middle Ages down to the middle of the 
 thirteenth century material is comparatively scanty, but 
 from thence onwards we have geographical treatises of a 
 detailed and scholarly character, and we can summarize the 
 ideas of the time with much more certainty. Possibly 
 it was only in the period between the time of Roger 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 Bacon (c. 1270) and the recovery of Ptolemy’s geographical 
 work in the first half of the fifteenth century that 
 there was formulated a conception of the world that 
 was generally acceptable to educated men. The medieval 
 point of view can thus be seen best in the ideas of the 
 fourteenth century, for after its close other ideas came 
 rapidly surging in, partly as has been said, from the results 
 of exploration and partly from the recovery of the ancient 
 learning and the rise of a new critical spirit, brought about in 
 the geographical sphere especially by the study of the 
 writings of Ptolemy. 
 
 Each of these three periods will be taken up in turn, and 
 we shall endeavour to deal with the principal travels and 
 travellers of the time, the motives that inspired and the 
 circumstances that controlled them. Men in all ages are 
 the creatures of their ideas, and it seems fitting, therefore, 
 before entering upon the more detailed studies of our later 
 chapters, to trace in outline some of the beliefs as to the 
 nature of the world in which they lived that were familiar 
 to the minds of the travellers of the Middle Age. Those 
 beliefs pointed out the goals for which they sought, guided 
 the direction they took, and coloured all their observations 
 on the way. Hence, to understand aright the descriptions 
 of travels that they penned, we should know something 
 of the preconceptions with which they started. 
 
 The culminating work of ancient geography was that 
 written in Greek about A.p. 150 by the Egyptian astronomer, 
 Claudius Ptolomceus. By reason of his access to the stores 
 of learning preserved in the great library of Alexandria, 
 he was able to summarize in an orderly and complete way 
 the work of earlier scientific thinkers like Huipparchus, 
 Eratosthenes, and Marinus of Tyre. His point of view was 
 that of a mathematician and his treatment orderly and 
 systematic. His main work was devoted to Astronomy, and 
 is contained in a book that had great influence on Arabic 
 thought and is still known by the names the Arabs gave it, 
 Almagest. His Geography, however, is not solely confined 
 to the mathematical side of the subject, but is also descriptive, 
 and it was provided with scientifically constructed maps 
 which gave an elaborate picture of the world as known to 
 the Greeks. For this work he was able to collect much 
 
A TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 information from the traders and travellers who came to 
 Alexandria, then the greatest commercial centre of the world. 
 Ptolemy’s Almagest was fairly well known to the thinkers 
 of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through Arabic 
 versions, but his Geography was comparatively little known. 
 It was not until it was translated into Latin about a.p. 1410 
 that it began to exercise a gradually preponderating influence 
 upon geographical thought. The Middle Ages knew little 
 Greek, but in the fifteenth century this defect was remedied. 
 Ptolemy’s Geography, which was at first circulated in poor Latin 
 translations, but by 1478, when a magnificent edition was 
 published at Rome with fine maps, it had become familiar 
 to scholars. It was printed in Greek in 1533. Between 
 1410 and 1478, therefore, the ancient view of the 
 world was revived, and profoundly modified the medieval 
 concepts and rapidly displaced them. The next half century 
 (1478=1528) saw increasing attempts to fit the facts of the 
 new oceanic discoveries of the sailors into the scientific 
 Ptolemaic framework, but ultimately it was realized that 
 the task was impossible. Ptolemy’s system was bit by bit 
 abandoned, and the field was left for the modern conceptions 
 and the work of geographers and cartographers like Gerhard 
 Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, who used cartographical 
 apparatus and drew maps which differ little in essentials 
 from those in use to-day. 
 
 The geographical Renaissance may be dated roughly as 
 beginning, therefore, in the decade 1410-20, which also saw 
 the beginning of the first systematic efforts of the Portuguese 
 towards oceanic exploration. But the old ideas were 
 not abruptly abandoned. They were gradually modified 
 to fit the new knowledge, and many even of the greatest 
 discoverers, and above all Christopher Columbus, thought of 
 their work in a medieval way and sought in vain for the 
 fabulous wonders that had filled so many of the pages of 
 writers of earlier generations. 
 
 From the knowledge of the early Middle Ages true views of 
 the shape of the earth had almost disappeared and had given 
 place to fanciful ideas of symmetry based upon the specula- 
 tions of Hebrew poets. The systematic thought of the great 
 writers of antiquity was almost forgotten, and only the 
 fables and marvels of compilers like Solinus (8rd ec. A.D.) 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 remained in circulation. We may take as an example one 
 of the BEatTus maps, so called from having been attached 
 to a Commentary on the Apocalypse written by the Spanish 
 priest Beatus at the end of the eighth century. The map he 
 drew was intended to portray the spread of the Christian 
 faith, as the kingdom of heaven is likened in the Gospel to a 
 field sown with seed. The typical Beatus map contains a 
 series of pictures of the Twelve Apostles, each in that part 
 of the world where he is traditionally said to have preached. 
 Jerusalem with St. James does not occupy the centre of the 
 map, but Adam and Eve and the serpent are shown in a 
 vignette at the top, which marks the East. The whole is 
 surrounded by the ocean with pictures of fishes and some- 
 times row-boats. 
 
 But much sounder ideas of cosmogony than these were 
 held by the leading thinkers of the time, the outstanding 
 example of whom is the Venerable Bede in the early 
 eighth century who, familiar as he was with many of 
 the best writings of antiquity, still held fast to the ancient 
 idea of a spherical globe. Much more cosmographical 
 writing has been usually attributed to Bede than is 
 now accepted as genuine by his editors. But there are 
 certain passages in the authentic treatise De Natura Rerum 
 which exhibit clearly his views of cosmogony. He tells 
 us that the world is divided into five zones which are 
 distinguished by differences of temperature, and herein he 
 closely follows the system of the late Latin cosmographer 
 Macrobius, whose influence was widely spread for many 
 centuries :— 
 
 ‘* The first is the northern, uninhabitable by reason of cold 
 and whose stars never set for us. The second is the solstitial 
 or summer zone, which is habitable and temperate ; the third 
 the equinoctial covered by the burning orb of the sun, torrid 
 and uninhabitable. The fourth zone is the brumal or 
 winter zone (brumalis) on the lower side turned towards the 
 southern pole, temperate and habitable. The fifth is the 
 austral zone around the southern turning point (verticem), 
 which is covered with land and is uninhabitable by reason 
 of the cold. But the three middle zones are distinguished 
 by inequalities of their seasons ; when the sun holds the first at 
 the summer solstice, the second at the equinox, and the third 
 in winter. The two extreme zones are always without the 
 
6 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 sun. Wherefore from the island of Thule with one day’s 
 sailing to the north the frozen sea is reached.”’1 In his 
 De Temporum Ratione, a work relating to the astronomical 
 calendar and undoubtedly genuine, Bede again touches 
 on cosmogony and discusses the Antipodes, where he strongly 
 denies that beings like ourselves can exist. 
 
 But other professedly scientific works have been ascribed to 
 the historian that are now shown to be two or three centuries 
 later in date, and it is from these credulous productions 
 that what have been thought to be Bede’s cosmogonical beliefs 
 have usually been quoted, thus doing him serious injustice. 
 The first of these, De EHlementis Philosophie, possibly 
 written by William de Conches about a.p. 1100, has been 
 cited even by so erudite a scholar as the Visconde de Santarem ? 
 as exemplifying Bede’s geographical ideas, though it commits 
 itself to an elaborate symmetry of inventive detail that \ ould 
 be impossible for the rational thinking of the great scholar. 
 An extract is worth quotation as showing something of 
 medieval methods of geographical reasoning :— 
 
 “The earth is an element placed at the middle of the 
 world ; it is at its middle as the yolk is in the egg ; about it 
 there is water, as about the yolk there is the white. About 
 the water the air like the skin containing the white of the egg. 
 The earth is thus placed in the middle of the world and 
 receives thence all heavy things, and although naturally 
 it is congealed and dry in its divers parts, it comprises many 
 different qualities by reason of happenings beyond itself. 
 For the part that is subjected to the burning part of the air 
 is torrid from the burning heat of the sun and inhabitable ; 
 but the ends are frozen by reason of the two cold parts [of 
 the air] and are uninhabitable, though the part subjected 
 to the temperate part of the air is temperate and habitable. 
 Since, as we have said before, there are two parts of this tem- 
 perate sort, there are two parts of the earth that are temperate 
 and suitable for habitation, one on this side of the torrid 
 zone, the other on the further side. But although both are 
 habitable yet we believe that only one of them is habited 
 by men and even that not wholly. But philosophers make 
 
 1 De Natura Rerum, cap. ix, Works (ed. Smith), vol. vi, p. 103. 
 2 Barros e Sousa, Visconde de Santarem, Essai sur l’histoive de la 
 cosmographie, i, 25. 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 mention of the inhabitants of both not because they are there, 
 but because they say that they might be.” 
 
 In another work, possibly a little later than Bede’s time but 
 falsely attributed to him, De mundi celestis terrae que con- 
 stitutione, similar ideas are set forth, and it is implied that 
 though there may be habitable regions beyond the torrid 
 zone, yet their inhabitants, the Antichthones, cannot reach 
 us and we cannot reach them. Again, the legend attached 
 to a celebrated Turin map of the eleventh century describes 
 a circumfluent ocean surrounding the torrid zone and says: 
 ** The ocean surrounding the coasts of the land almost at the 
 height of the horizon divides it into two parts, of which we 
 inhabit the upper and our antipodes the other, nevertheless 
 none of us can come to them nor none of them to us.” 
 
 The most noticeable thing in these speculations and, 
 perhaps, the most disconcerting to those who have thought 
 of the men of the Middle Ages as believers in a flat earth, is 
 that there is not a hint of such an idea. Its globular 
 character is entirely accepted. 
 
 A typical scholar of the eleventh century, Adam of Bremen, 
 who was canon and master of the school of the great cathedral 
 there between 1060 and 1076, has left works of the greatest 
 value for the history of Northern Europe in the early Middle 
 Ages, but he also wrote geographical works of much interest. 
 From his pages we glean the most nearly contemporary 
 references to the explorations of the Vikings, and we may 
 take him as fairly representing the thought of his age. 
 
 He clearly grasped the sphericity of the earth and refers 
 to the axis around which the globe revolves, but he dealt little 
 with abstract ideas and mainly devoted himself to geographical 
 descriptions of Northern Europe derived from travellers. 
 He considered that terra firma was entirely surrounded by the 
 infinite and terrible ocean, the northern part of which was 
 covered with ice and darkness. The sea was stiff with salt 
 and covered with ice so ancient as to be black and tindery. 
 Venturous sailors like Harold Hardrada, who had sailed 
 north into those seas, had found terrible whirlpools like the 
 Maelstrém at the “ darkling end of the failing world”’, which 
 would suck in ships and disgorge them again like some 
 gigantic monster. 
 
 1 Santarem, op. cit. i, 27. 
 
8 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 One of the most interesting representations of the globe 
 in medieval MSS. is to be found in the Liber Floridus of 
 Lambertus Audomarensis, a canon of St. Omer, written 
 in 1180. The work is an encylopeedia of knowledge culled 
 from many earlier authors, and it had a considerable vogue 
 down to the end of the fourteenth century. Lambert 
 attempts to achieve two purposes, to give a symmetrical 
 conception of the whole globe, showing the relation of all its 
 parts, and to describe terra firma, the world inhabited by 
 man, which, according to him, fills only one quarter of the 
 whole. It cannot be claimed that any of his ideas were 
 original: they did not profess to be, but are in deference 
 to authority derived from the ancient philosophers, and 
 those recorded serve to show us the dim memories of the 
 learning of old times that alone remained among the men of the 
 twelfth century. In the most interesting of Lambert’s several 
 mappemondes attached to the Liber Floridus, the east is at 
 the top and the earth is represented as a sphere round the 
 Equator of which flows a wide belt of sea. This mid-land sea 
 is said to be invisible to man, for the full strength of the sun, 
 *‘ going just overhead by the Milky Way, raises it to torrid 
 heat,” and prevents any human being from crossing it. Terra 
 firma, the great land mass of the habitable world, is thus 
 divided from the Land of the Fabled Antipods, the Australian 
 land, or terra australis nondum cognita. This is “‘ temperate in 
 climate but unknown to the sons of Adam, having nothing 
 which is related to our race. ... When we are scorched 
 with heat [the Antipods] are chilled with cold; and the 
 northern stars which we are permitted to discern are entirely 
 hidden from them’. Many of Lambert’s imaginings, 
 derived from ancient Greek science and also accepted by the 
 best writers of the later Middle Ages, are not widely removed 
 from reality, but he adds to them many impossible sugges- 
 tions. He tells us that the Antipods have days and nights 
 of equal length, and that they suffer winter twice over, 
 while immediately to the south of them is a great region 
 entirely uninhabitable by reason of the perpetual cold and 
 darkness. 
 
 The Terrestrial Paradise, in which are Enoch and Elias, 
 is placed in a circle surrounded by rays and stars at the 
 extreme east, and the antipodes of Paradise in another circle 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 at the extreme west with the inscription ‘ Here live our 
 antipodes, but they have a different night, and days which 
 are contrary to ours, and so for the setting of the stars.” 
 Lambert appears to conceive of this land of the antipodes 
 as another world similar in form and size to terra firma. 
 
 It is interesting to note how the idea of the antipodes 
 appealed to the greatest of the poets of the Middle Ages. 
 In the Thirty-fourth Canto of Dante’s Inferno, written at 
 the beginning of the fourteenth century, Virgil carries the 
 poet by a secret path to the surface of the other hemisphere 
 of the earth where once more they obtain a sight of the 
 stars. In reply to Dante’s inquiry of Virgil as to where they 
 were :— 
 
 “‘ [He] answering spake. Thou deemest thou art still 
 On the other side the centre, where I grasp’d 
 The abhorred worm that boreth through the world. 
 Thou wast on the other side, so long as I 
 Descended, when I turn’d, thou didst o’erpass 
 That point to which from every part is dragg’d 
 All heavy substance. Thou art now arrived 
 Under the hemisphere opposed to that 
 Which the great continent doth overspread, 
 And underneath whose canopy expired 
 The Man, that was born sinless and so lived. 
 Thy feet are planted on the smallest sphere 
 Whose other aspect is Judecca. Morn 
 Here rises, when there evening sets: and he 
 Whose shaggy pile we scaled, yet standeth fix’d, 
 As at first. On this part he [i.e. Lucifer] fell down 
 From heaven ; and th’ earth, here prominent before, 
 Through fear of him did veil her with the sea, 
 And to our hemisphere retired.” 
 
 The Twenty-seventh Canto of the Purgatorio, too, begins 
 with lines that show how Dante fully realized the sphericity 
 of the earth and its effect upon differences of time in various 
 parts of the world. 
 
 ‘* Now was the sun so stationed, as when 
 His early radiance quivers on the heights 
 Where streamed his Maker’s blood ; while Libra hangs 
 Above Hesperian Ebro; and new fires 
 Meridian, flush on Ganges’ yellow tide. 
 So day was sinking when the angel of God 
 Appear’d before us.”’ 
 
 1 For a full analysis of the MS. of the Liber Floridus at Ghent, see 
 J. P. Migne, Patrologia, vol. clxiii, pp. 1005-31. On fol. 19 of this MS. 
 is the mappemonde entitled Sphera triplicata gentium mundi. Gentes 
 Asiae, Europe, Africe diveyse. For a discussion of all Lambert’s maps, 
 see Santarem, op. cit., li, 194, etc. 
 
10 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Perhaps the most numerous class of medieva] maps 
 comprised those which are called from their form ‘ T-O 
 maps’’. The east is placed at the top of the map, and not as 
 with us on the right. The continental mass is surrounded by 
 the Ocean as an O, and through the middle of the lower 
 or western half of the map is drawn the Mediterranean Sea 
 stretching from the Pillars of Hercules (our Strait of Gibraltar) 
 to the coast of Palestine. Into the inner end of the Mediter- 
 ranean flows from the south on our right hand, a greatly exag- 
 gerated Nile, and from the north, on our left, a strip of water 
 which represents our Black Sea, Marmora and the Aigean. 
 Thus the inland seas form a rough T dividing the land 
 (terra firma) into three unequal portions or continents, an 
 idea that was universal in the Middle Ages and still sways 
 us, though we know that it has little geographical value. 
 Each continent was associated with one of the sons of Noah, 
 Asia with Shem (hence our phrase ‘Semitic peoples’’), 
 Africa with Ham (hence negroes are called ‘‘sons of 
 Ham’’), and Europe, inhabited by men of white stock, 
 with Japhet. Jerusalem is usually situated at the centre of 
 the map after the Scriptural tradition, that it was a city set 
 on a hill from which the Gospel light shone out to all 
 mankind. 
 
 From fanciful conceptions such as these to the critical 
 and systematic speculations of the scholars of the thirteenth 
 century who had a knowledge of the work of the Arab astro- 
 nomers is an immense stride forward. Two of the greatest 
 writers of the Middle Ages, Albertus Magnus and Roger 
 Bacon, each devoted attention to geographical study, and 
 in the work of each we find valuable knowledge. Each 
 gave much consideration to the extent of the habitable 
 regions and the nature of the Antipodes. 
 
 Albertus Magnus in his Liber cosmographicus de natura 
 locorum (written about 1260) discusses how difference in 
 latitude causes a difference in climate. ‘‘ All the torrid 
 zone is habitable,’ he says, ‘“‘and it is a popular error to 
 believe that those whose feet are directed towards us 
 must necessarily fall. The same climates are repeated in 
 the lower hemisphere on the other side of the equator, and 
 two races of Ethiopians exist, those of the northern tropic 
 and the blacks of the southern tropic. The lower hemisphere, 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 antipodal to our own, is not entirely watery ; it is in great 
 part inhabited, and if the men of those far-off regions do not 
 come to us, it is because of the vast seas that are set between ; 
 perhaps also some magnetic power there holds back human 
 flesh and blood (carnes humanas) as the magnet holds the iron. 
 Besides, the peoples of the torrid zone, far from suffering in 
 intelligence by reason of the heat of the climate, are very 
 learned, as is proved by the books of philosophy and astronomy 
 that have come to us from India.” 
 
 Roger Bacon, who was contemporary with Albertus Magnus, 
 before embarking in his Opus Majus upon an elaborate 
 geographical description of the habitable world, devotes 
 attention to a consideration of its extent and the possibility 
 of other zones than the north temperate climate being 
 habitable and inhabited. He shows that the sea necessarily 
 must occupy less than three-quarters of the surface of the 
 globe, although this conclusion conflicts with the ancient 
 Hebrew idea as expressed in the fourth Book of Esdras (cap. vi, 
 verse 42): ‘‘ Upon the third day thou didst command that 
 the waters should be gathered together in the seventh part 
 of the earth; six parts didst thou dry up.” In fact, he 
 maintains that the eccentricity of the solar orbit is likely to 
 produce even more dry land in the southern hemisphere 
 than we know to exist in the mass of the northern continent. 
 He explains clearly the effect of the sun’s passage along the 
 ecliptic on the climates of the world, and that it is the cause 
 of the long days of summer and the long nights of winter in 
 Scotland and beyond it towards the Pole. He considers 
 with great interest the work done by the Arabs and the 
 astronomers of Alfonso X of Castile in constructing astro- 
 nomical tables for the determination of latitudes and longi- 
 tudes, and claims that it is desirable that such work should 
 be continued, and with greater accuracy, for obtaining the 
 benefits that he enumerates. ‘‘ For their place of birth is 
 the principle of the generation of things,’’ and so a knowledge 
 of latitude and longitude is necessary for a proper under- 
 standing of man and of Nature, for the spiritual government 
 of the world, and for a knowledge of the home of the lost ten 
 tribes of the Jews and the place where Antichrist will arise. 
 
 By repeated touches such as these last we can perceive how, 
 despite his seeming modernity, Bacon is still a friar of the 
 
12 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Middle Ages, and though the maps that almost certainly 
 accompanied his copy of the Opus Majus when he sent it 
 to Pope Clement have not come down to us, it is very possible 
 that they would not have differed much from those that were 
 being drawn by his contemporaries and by succeeding 
 scholars in their studies for a century more. A new class 
 of maps was certainly arising for practical use among seamen 
 and merchants, but they were far beneath the lofty con- 
 sideration of the learned cosmographers. The gradual 
 development of a realistic representation of coast-lines in 
 the seamen’s charts runs a separate course and cannot here 
 concern us. The scholastic conceptions of the world still 
 continued to be elaborated throughout the fourteenth century 
 and they received a wider circulation than ever before in the 
 pages of one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. 
 
 We shall say more of the spurious work called Mandeville’s 
 Travels in a later part of this book, but here we need only 
 note the views therein expressed concerning the shape of the 
 earth which are contained in the twenty-first chapter. The 
 book was written about 1370 and was in constant circulation 
 in Western Europe throughout the fifteenth century. It 
 may fairly be claimed to represent the average ideas of 
 cosmogony prevailing among educated men before the 
 complete recovery of Ptolemy’s work. A few extracts will 
 suffice. 
 
 ‘* How the Earth and the Sea be of round form and shape, 
 by proof of the star that is yclept Antartyk, that is fixed in 
 the south. 
 
 ** In the land of Lamary [i.e. Sumatra] nor in many other 
 beyond that no man may see the star Transmontane [i.e. 
 the Pole Star] that is yclept the star of the sea, that is 
 immovable, that is toward the north, that we clepe the lode- 
 star. But men see another star the contrary to him, towards 
 the south that is yelept Antartyk. . . . And this star that is 
 toward the north that we clepe the lode-star appeareth not to 
 them. For which cause men may well perceive that the land 
 and the sea be of round shape and form, for the part of the 
 firmament [that] sheweth in one country, sheweth not in 
 another country. And men may well prove by experience 
 and subtle compassment of wit that if a man found passages 
 by ships that would go to search the world, men might go by 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 ship all about the world above and beneath. . . . Amanmay 
 environ all the earth of all the world as well under and above 
 and turn again to his country that had company and shipping 
 and conduct. And always he should find men, lands and 
 isles as well as in this country. For we wit well that they 
 that be toward the Antartyk they be straight feet against 
 feet of them that dwell under the Transmontane also well as 
 we and they that dwell under the Transmontane also well as 
 weand they that dwell under us be feet against feet. . .. They 
 have the night when we have the day, and [while] that men 
 go upward to one coast, men go downward to another coast. 
 But how it seemeth simple to simple men unlearned that 
 men may not go under the earth, and also that men should 
 fall toward the heaven from under. But that may not be 
 upon less than we may fall toward heaven from the earth 
 where we be. ... For if a man might fall from the earth unto 
 the firmament, by greater reason the earth and the sea that 
 be so great and so heavy should fall to the firmament, but 
 that may not be.’’! From these very sensible observations 
 the author proceeds to a demonstration of the way in which 
 astronomers apply mathematical reasoning to the mapping 
 of the firmament and the earth which although it is beyond 
 our present purpose is of considerable interest as showing 
 that the geography of educated men at the end of the four- 
 teenth century was by no means so entirely fabulous as has 
 sometimes been imagined. 
 
 Before returning to Roger Bacon by an unexpected route 
 it is necessary to say something of a scholar of immense 
 reputation in his own day and of great influence for a century 
 after. The cosmographical writings of Cardinal Pierre 
 d’Ailly or Petrus de Aliaco, Archbishop of Cambrai (1330— 
 1420) were almost forgotten after the great discoveries of the 
 early sixteenth century, and it was not until Alexander von 
 Humboldt again drew attention to them early in the nine- 
 teenth that their historical importance was once more 
 recognized. D’Ailly’s work relating to geographical and 
 astronomical speculations and the reform of the calendar is 
 contained in a series of short treatises which are bound up with 
 some of the writings of Jean Gerson in the unique edition which 
 
 1 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. P. Hamelins (Early English Text Society, 
 London, 1919), vol. i, pp. 120-4. 
 
14 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 was printed at Louvain after 1480, but many MSS. copies of 
 the treatises are extant showing how much they circulated 
 in the fifteenth century. The most important treatise is 
 the first in the published volume called Tractatus de Imagine 
 Mundi. It was written in 1410 when d’Ailly knew the 
 astronomical work of Ptolemy in his Almagest, but had not 
 yet read his Geography, first translated into Latin in that 
 year. Three years later in 1413 d’Ailly, having read the 
 new translations, wrote another geographical work, the 
 Compendium Cosmographie, especially to summarize .the 
 useful things contained in Ptolemy’s Geographie Syntazis, and 
 he is therefore not only the last of the medieval geographers 
 before the Ptolemaic revival, but also the first of the Western 
 scholars who began that revival and thus had so great an 
 influence on thought. Besides these two treatises d’Ailly 
 also drew a mappemonde to illustrate his geographical ideas 
 and wrote a short explanatory note, the Epilogus Mappe 
 Mundi, to accompany it. 
 
 Into his general views concerning the arrangement of 
 climate, and the sphericity of the earth we need not enter, 
 because they very much resemble what we have already 
 mentioned. His work is marked by great erudition, and not 
 only are all the principal writers on geography, both Greek 
 and Latin, quoted, but also many citations are given from 
 Arab authors, Averroes, Hali, Alfragan, Avicenna, and so on. 
 This display of wide reading is of interest, as will appear in a 
 moment. Probably the most significant passages of d’Ailly’s 
 writings are those in which he discusses the extent of the 
 habitable globe. Some extracts from these will enable us to 
 see something of his ideas of cosmogony :— 
 
 ‘* The earth is spherical,’’ he writes in the seventh chapter 
 of his Imago Mundi, ‘“‘ and the Western ocean is relatively 
 small. Aristotle pretends, contrary to Ptolemy, that more 
 than a quarter of the whole globe is inhabited, and Averroes 
 sustains the same opinion. The Stagyrite affirms also that 
 the extent of sea is small between the coast of Spain in the 
 West and the shores of India in the East. We are not con- 
 cerned here with the actual Spain, but with the Further Spain, 
 which is Africa. Seneca asserts that one can traverse that 
 sea in a few days if the wind is favourable. Again, Pliny 
 teaches us that ships from the Gulf of Arabia can arrive in a 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 short time at Gades in the South of Spain. Whence we con- 
 clude that the sea is not big enough to cover three-quarters 
 of the globe. Esdras affirms in his fourth book that six 
 parts of the earth are habitable and inhabited and that the 
 seventh part alone is covered by the waters. The authority 
 of that work has been recognized by the saints, who have made 
 use of it for confirming the sacred verities. Beyond Thule, 
 the last island of the Ocean, after one day’s sail the sea is 
 frozen and stiff. At the Poles there live great ghosts and 
 ferocious beasts, the enemies of man. Water abounds there, 
 because those places are cold, and cold multiplies humours 
 [or vapours].”’ 
 
 In the forty-eighth chapter he tells us: ‘“‘ Thus the water 
 runs from one Pole to the other forming a sea which extends 
 between the extremity of Spain and the beginning of India, 
 of small width, in such a way that the beginning of India 
 comes to beyond the half of the equinoctial line [i.e. in the 
 other hemisphere], a situation very near to that which the 
 end of our hemisphere occupies.” 
 
 In the forty-ninth chapter he uses another argument 
 that he had borrowed from Aristotle: ‘‘ The west coast of 
 Africa cannot be far removed from the east coast of India, 
 for in both those countries elephants are found.” 
 
 Now the greatest interest of these and similar extracts 
 from d’Ailly is that they were of fundamental importance in 
 governing the ideas of the last of the medieval travellers, 
 Christopher Columbus. It has now been proved that practi- 
 cally the only books on cosmogony that were familiar to him 
 were two—the Imago Mundi of d’Ailly, published between 
 1480 and 1487, and the Historia rerum ubique gestarum of Aineas 
 Silvius (Pope Pius II), published at Venice in 1477. There 
 are still preserved in the Library of the Colombine at Seville 
 the original copies of these books that were used by Christopher 
 and his brother Bartholomew, and their margins are filled 
 from end to end with remarks and notes in their own hands. 
 Bitter controversy has raged over the nature of Columbus’ 
 ‘* Great Enterprise ’’, and it cannot be claimed that agreement ~ 
 has yet been reached, but there can be no doubt that when 
 he set out upon his great voyage, and, in fact, long after, 
 it was with the geographical equipment of the later Middle 
 Ages. It is no paradox to include him in our survey.! 
 
 1 See further on this point, Chapter VIII, of the concepts of that time. 
 
16 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 On his return from his first voyage Columbus proclaimed 
 loudly that the new lands he had discovered lay not far from 
 the dominions of the Great Khan, of which Marco Polo had 
 told. They were a part of the India extra Gangem of the 
 ancients. He called his islands las ylas indias, or more usually 
 las indias, a use of the plural that is not found at an earlier 
 date. The term came into common usage, and to this day 
 we are committed to the error and speak of “the West 
 Indies’? and ‘Red Indians’. But the best thinkers in 
 Spain, and even the Catholic kings themselves, were 
 incredulous, and rather believed that the Admiral had merely 
 discovered another and larger group of oceanic islands like 
 Madeira or the Azores. It is probable that it was only then 
 that he and his brother Bartholomew began to attempt to 
 support by geographical arguments the truth of their claims 
 to have done more than all the celebrated captains of the 
 King of Portugal. When the high hopes of the second voyage 
 (September, 1493—June, 1496) faded into bitter disappoint- 
 ment and no signs whatever could be found of the rich lands 
 of Cipangu and Cathay, scepticism of Columbus’ theories 
 deepened into certainty of their falsity. But he was 
 obstinately determined to prove them true, and when he began 
 his third voyage in May, 1498, he determined to sail further 
 south in search of the eastern extremity of the habitable 
 world. After a three months’ voyage he sighted what was 
 undoubtedly continental land, and hastily sailing on to 
 Hispaniola he wrote home to give his news. He was quite 
 certain that the new discovery was what he had been searching 
 for, India extra Gangem, a part of the old ‘ habitable world ’ 
 and he therefore spoke of it by the old name as terra firma 
 or in Spanish trerra ferme. The Elizabethans called it “‘ the 
 Spanish Main’’. To confirm his statements to his sovereigns 
 he entered, in his letter, on elaborate arguments from cosmo- 
 gony that were either so fantastic or so obviously ill-digested 
 that he very seriously damaged his reputation with the 
 authorities. In his geographical ideas, as has been said, 
 he was emphatically a man of the Middle Ages, and an 
 uncritical one at that. He took his arguments ready-made 
 from old-fashioned, handy compendia, but assumed an 
 appearance of immense erudition by quoting passage after 
 passage from classical authors, both Greek and Latin, to 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 prove that the islands and mainland he had discovered 
 are part of Asia. He refers incidentally to d’Ailly as an 
 authority supporting his view, but he does not reveal the fact 
 that almost every scrap of his classical learning is lifted 
 bodily out of the Cardinal’s pages. In a later chapter 
 there will be occasion to refer again to the extraordinary 
 cosmogonical ideas he expressed wherever d’Ailly’s lead is 
 not followed, but here we need only quote one passage. 
 
 ‘* Pliny writes that the sea and land together form a sphere,”’ 
 says Columbus, “ but that the ocean forms the greatest mass 
 and lies uppermost, while the earth is below and supports 
 the ocean, and that the two afford a mutual support to 
 each other as the kernel of a nut is confined by its shell. 
 The master of scholastic history,! in commenting upon 
 Genesis, says that the waters are not very extensive; and 
 that although when they were first created they covered the 
 earth, they were yet vaporous like a cloud, and that after- 
 wards they became condensed, and occupied but a small 
 space. In this notion Nicholas of Lira agrees. Aristotle says 
 that the world is small and the water very limited in extent, 
 and that it is easy to pass from Spain to the Indies ; and this 
 is confirmed by Averroes, and by the Cardinal Pedro de 
 Aliaco, who, in supporting this opinion, shows that it agrees 
 with that of Seneca, and says that Aristotle had been enabled 
 to gain information respecting the world by means of 
 Alexander the Great, and Seneca by means of Nero, and Pliny 
 through the Romans. The said Cardinal allows to these 
 writers greater authority than to Ptolemy and other Greeks 
 and Arabs ; and in confirmation of their opinion concerning the 
 small quantity of water on the surface of the globe, and the 
 limited amount of land covered by that water in comparison 
 of what had been related on the authority of Ptolemy and 
 his disciples, he finds a passage in the third book of Esdras, 
 where that sacred writer says that of seven parts of the world 
 six are uncovered, and the other is covered with water.’ 2 
 This reference to d’Ailly is to the passage in the Highth 
 Chapter of his T'ractatus de Imagine Mundt. 
 
 The striking fact was first observed by Humboldt that the 
 
 1 Petrus Comestor, author of the Historia scolastica. 
 2 Select Letters of Columbus, ed. R. H. Major (Hakluyt Society), 
 
 p- 140. 
 c 
 
18 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Cardinal had lifted this passage bodily and almost literally 
 from Roger Bacon’s treatise the Opus Majus. The 
 demonstration is unmistakable and added to other evidence 
 of a similar sort it shows us that the world of Columbus, who 
 has long been credited in the popular view with a foremost 
 position among the leaders of the MJRenaissance, was 
 emphatically the world of the Middle Age. Columbus in 
 1498 cribbed his views from d’Ailly who wrote in 1410, 
 d’Ailly cribbed from Roger Bacon whose work dates from 
 1267, Roger Bacon derives through the Arabs from the Greeks. 
 The most famous of the explorers of the new age, in fact, 
 drew none of his ideas directly from the newly recovered 
 geographical literature of the Greeks as did the true 
 Renaissance thinkers like Peter Martyr or Damian Goes. 
 The discovery of a new world was accomplished not with 
 Greek or modern geographical concepts but with medieval. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THe DeEcAY OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE 
 DECLINE OF EXPLORATION, A.D. 800—500 
 
 By M. L. W. LAIsTNER, M.A. 
 
 | ie question may be asked how an essay with the above 
 
 title can be justifiably included in a volume dealing with 
 the travel and exploration of the Middle Ages. A cognate 
 query would be, at what chronological point should the 
 beginning of the medieval period be fixed? Should it be 
 dated from the reign of Constantine or from the fall of the 
 Western Empire in 4a.p. 476? The truth, of course, is that 
 it is impossible to fix any precise point at which Antiquity 
 ends and the Middle Ages begin ; the presence of such fixed 
 points in examination syllabuses is, or should be, a mere con- 
 vention. They certainly have no historical value, for the 
 process of transition was gradual, and what may be called 
 the ‘water-tight compartment’ theory of history is as 
 scientific as solar myths or the postulate of the ‘noble 
 savage’. But there is, it may be suggested, adequate 
 justification, first for introducing the topic of this essay in a 
 book devoted to medieval travel, and, second, for fixing the 
 period of two centuries from a.p. 300 to 500, though it 
 may be added that the dates are only very rough. It is 
 impossible to understand medieval conceptions of the 
 inhabited world and to realize how very limited the geographical 
 knowledge of even the most cultured men in the earlier 
 Middle Ages was ; impossible, too, to appreciate the full signi- 
 ficance of that credulity which did not question the real 
 existence immediately beyond the known parts of the earth, 
 of dragons and Polyphemus-eyed men, without having assessed 
 the knowledge possessed in earlier times and its gradual 
 decline during the course of several centuries. And that is 
 precisely the importance of our period in this connexion, 
 for in it we can trace a more or less continuous deterioration 
 
20 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 both in the theory of geography and the practice of explora- 
 tion from the glories of the Augustan and the Antonine ages. 
 
 The first century of our era was a very important epoch 
 for the history of geographical exploration, and a _ brief 
 review of the evidence for that period will serve two purposes : 
 it will explain how Ptolemy, writing in the second century, 
 was able to enrich his work with so much new information 
 and, by way of contrast, the decline both in enterprise and 
 in knowledge which characterizes the period of the later 
 Empire will be the more apparent. 
 
 In the time of Nero we learn that a Roman expedition 
 was Officially sent to explore the Nile above Syene (Assouan). 
 According to Pliny the elder, the explorers made their way 
 a long distance up country as far as N. Atthiopia, and they 
 found much desolation in those parts. “It was not Roman 
 arms,” he says, “‘ that made that land deserted, but AXthiopia © 
 has been wasted by its wars with the Egyptians, having in 
 turn ruled and been enslaved.’ ! About the same time 
 Suetonius Paulinus, better known as the conqueror of 
 Boadicea, was in charge of an expedition which advanced 
 some little way into the interior beyond Mt. Atlas. He 
 crossed an expanse of desert and reached a river called Ger, 
 which may be identified with the Ghir River which flows 
 down from the eastern slopes of the Atlas range towards 
 Beni Abbes. Paulinus brought back information of a people 
 called the Canarii who dwelt in this region and of the abun- 
 dance of elephants and snakes and other wild creatures there. 
 Again, an enterprising knight explored the amber route 
 from Italy to the Baltic; we are not told the precise way 
 followed, but only that he went by way of Carnuntum on the 
 Danube, a site that lies about thirty-five miles east of the 
 modern Vienna. The distance from Carnuntum to the shores 
 of the Baltic was estimated at five hundred miles. Most of 
 the way the route doubtless followed the valley of the Elbe, 
 a highway for trade that was already in use in prehistoric 
 times. Our explorer returned with large quantities of amber, 
 which was prized not only as jewellery but for its supposed 
 medicinal qualities. Further, there can be no doubt that 
 after Agricola’s governorship of Britain (A.p. 86-95) much 
 new information about our island became available. But 
 
 1 Pliny, Nat. Hist., vi, 181. 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 3800-500 21 
 
 perhaps the most interesting venture in this century was that 
 of a certain Hippalus ; he had observed the periodicity of the 
 monsoons in the Indian Ocean and he was the first to sail 
 direct across that expanse of sea from Cape Fartaq in S.E. 
 Arabia to the S.W. coast of India, instead of hugging the 
 shores of E. Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as earlier navigators 
 had been wont to do. 
 
 It is obvious that, even if the primary object of these 
 various enterprises was either military or commercial, they 
 also provided the scientific inquirer with a great deal of new 
 material for the study of geography and ethnography. By 
 using all the information to be obtained from such sources, 
 together with the material amassed by Marinus of Tyre, 
 Ptolemy was enabled to compile his work in the first half of 
 the second century A.D. His geographical treatise, in 
 spite of many imperfections, marks the zenith of achievement 
 attained by the Ancients in this field. When treating of the 
 Far East, Ptolemy tells us that he derived his knowledge 
 ** from those that had sailed from there and had spent a long 
 time in traversing those parts”’, which must mean native 
 as well as Western travellers. Now, nothing illustrates the 
 advance made by Ptolemy’s book upon previous geographical 
 writers, as well as the faults of Ptolemy himself, better than 
 the account he gives of the countries of the Far East. His 
 erroneous system of longitude and latitude often leads him 
 to put a wrong interpretation on information otherwise 
 correct, while at times, in attempting to combine two different 
 accounts, he is led into serious error. Yet he has very 
 definite information about Chryse, the golden island or 
 peninsula that is, undoubtedly, the modern Malaya; and yet 
 more distant is the city of Kattigara, the furthest point, 
 so far as he knows, reached by any merchant coming from the 
 West. Kattigara has been identified with considerable 
 probability as on the site of Ha-noi near the coast of Annam. 
 Ha-noi was once Kiau-tchi and is referred to more than a 
 thousand years after Ptolemy’s time by Marco Polo under the 
 name of Caucigu. Ptolemy, however, had two accounts here 
 which he has combined in such a way that he has introduced 
 the Gulf of Siam twice over and, thereby getting his orienta- 
 tion wrong, placed Kattigara far away in the south-east, 
 
 4 Geog. , 2.17; 4. 
 
22 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 instead of to the north-east of Chryse. Ptolemy, in common 
 with other ancient geographers, believed that the unknown 
 land beyond ultimately joined the unknown parts of the Hast 
 African coast, thus making the Indian Ocean a vast inland sea. 
 Thus there can be no doubt that now and then adventurous 
 Roman and Greek traders had found their way even further 
 east than the mouths of the Ganges, and their general reports 
 and Ptolemy’s remark already quoted suggest that natives 
 of Far Eastern countries also found their way westwards, 
 if not to Rome, at any rate to Syria and Egypt. 
 
 When we turn to Africa, it is also not easy to fix precise 
 limits to the knowledge acquired by the Ancients. On the 
 eastern side of that Continent the coast was reasonably 
 familiar as far as Cape Guardafui, but it is clear from Ptolemy 
 that enterprising merchants had occasionally made their 
 way much further south. He mentions several who had 
 sailed from Aromata, i.e. the Somali coast, past Cape 
 Guardafui, as far as Rhapta or Rhapton. This place has been 
 tentatively located near the modern Pangani opposite Pemba 
 island, that is to say at the northern end of what was till 
 1914 German East Africa and is now the Tanganyika 
 Territory. An Island, Menuthias, mentioned by the Greek 
 writer, has similarly been equated with Zanzibar. If these 
 identifications are correct—and they are given with all 
 reserve—then these intrepid sailors reached a point some 
 five degrees south of the equator. 
 
 For the western side of Africa our information is much more 
 scanty ; it is very doubtful whether any point beyond Sierra 
 Leone was ever visited, and in most cases it is likely that 
 traders got no further than the Arsinarian promontory, 
 which is probably the same as Cape Verde. Ptolemy has 
 preserved a record of another interesting expedition. In 
 this case one Julius Maternus pushed on from Garama in 
 the modern Fezzan, behind Tripoli, and after a four months’ 
 journey reached ‘‘ Agisymba, the land of the Ethiopians, 
 where the rhinoceroses gather together.” 1 ‘‘ Agisymba ”’ 
 is a vague term, impossible to define exactly, and the term 
 ‘* Ethiopians ’’ was used generally to describe the black 
 peoples of the interior. Thus the whole vast stretch of 
 country from the northern Soudan to equatorial Africa was 
 
 4 Geog.,,1, 8. 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 23 
 vaguely designated as ‘“‘ Atthiopia’’ and Agisymba was the 
 farthest point believed to have been reached by men. The 
 Congress or Diet of Rhinoceroses is even more mysterious. 
 Unimaginative scholars have asserted and doubtless will 
 continue to assert, that the MS. reading is corrupt. 
 
 It has been necessary to say something of exploration 
 in the first two centuries and of Ptolemy’s work, because, as 
 was suggested at the beginning, it is only by contrast with 
 this earlier period that the retrogression in the succeeding 
 centuries can be fully realized. 
 
 For this retrogression, which was most rapid during the 
 period A.D. 300 to 500 political conditions are to blame 
 first and foremost. Large tracts of country which had once 
 formed part of the Empire were either wholly lost or occupied 
 by half-civilized invaders, who even when they were nominally 
 the vassals of the Roman Emperors were little to be relied 
 upon. Thus gradually Dacia, much of Gaul, and Spain 
 passed into barbarian hands; and even within the shrunken 
 empire there were many tracts occupied, with the forced 
 consent of the Emperor, by kinsmen of those barbarians 
 who had come there in the earlier years. Britain ceased to 
 be part of the empire early in the fifth century and part of 
 North Africa was seized by the Vandals ; for the next twenty 
 years or so treaties and wars with Rome alternated, but the 
 net result was the loss to Rome of the North African provinces. 
 With this constant unrest, fighting and movement of peoples, 
 necessary travel, even within the Empire, was hazardous ; to 
 pass into the little known regions beyond was well nigh 
 impossible. And, besides, exploration hardly comes under 
 the head of necessary travel. 
 
 On the Eastern Frontier conditions were somewhat different ; 
 after Julian’s expedition to Persia in A.D. 363 that country 
 and Rome were at peace, save for one or two insignificant 
 episodes, for nearly a century and a half. Yet even here 
 travel, and consequently knowledge, grew less; for it would 
 appear that while under the Early Empire, the Roman 
 merchant himself not infrequently made his way to the Middle 
 and Far East, in the later period the carrying trade passed 
 almost entirely into other hands, Persian, Arab or Abyssinian. 
 The northern overland route through the Dariel Pass by way 
 of the Caspian to Central Asia was doubtless too insecure for 
 
24 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 even the most adventurous, and it is not till Justinian’s time, 
 in the middle of the sixth century, that some attempt 
 at reopening this caravan route was made. 
 
 If political causes were responsible for a decrease in practical 
 exploration, the decline in the theoretical study of geography 
 was largely the fault of the Church. The attitude of most 
 Christian writers at that time was not calculated to promote 
 any form of scientific inquiry. A literal interpretation of 
 Genesis could not be brought into harmony with the Ptolemaic 
 system of the Universe and the postulate of a spherical 
 earth, and so progress in knowledge was ruled out. A 
 definite example will serve to illustrate how a truth stated 
 in Ptolemy was lost for some twelve centuries : Herodotus 
 in the fifth century B.c. knew the true nature of the Caspian 
 Sea, that is to say he knew it to be a vast inland lake and not a 
 gulf of the northern ocean. His successors adhered to the 
 false view, but Marinus of Tyre and, following him, Ptolemy 
 quite definitely stated the true facts. Marinus indeed seems 
 to have known of a trade route running northwards from the 
 River Don round the Caspian to Lake Aral, and he mentions 
 rivers—e.g. the Volga and the Ural—not known before. 
 This is the information found in Ptolemy; in the early part 
 of the fifth century 4.p. one Marcianus of Heraclea composed 
 a short geographical treatise which is a rehash of earlier 
 authors, mainly Ptolemy. Yet when Marcianus says that 
 the Persian Gulf is opposite to the Caspian Sea, and that by 
 these two is formed the Isthmus of Asia, it is clear that he 
 has reverted to the erroneous view about the Caspian. The 
 Peutinger Table also perpetuates the error, which in the West 
 lasted in fact till the fourteenth century, though the Arab 
 geographers seem to have been aware of the true nature of 
 that sea. It is a pleasure to find that one of the Christian 
 Fathers, St. Basil, has the courage and fairmindedness to 
 mention both the right and the wrong view, though he does 
 not commit himself definitely to either. Elsewhere we also meet 
 an ingenious attempt to combine both views—that at least 
 is what it sounds like—for we are told that the Caspian was 
 fed by the Northern, i.e. the Arctic Sea, through underground 
 channels. 
 
 I have mentioned St. Basil ; he, in common with some of the 
 other earlier Fathers, is well aware of the Greek scientific 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 25 
 
 theory that the earth was spherical. There is a striking 
 passage in one of his Homilies on the creation of 
 the world in Genesis as follows: ‘* Because those who 
 write on cosmography have argued at length about the shape 
 of the earth, namely whether it is a sphere or a cylinder, 
 whether it resembles a quoit and is rounded off on the outside 
 as with a potter’s wheel, or whether it is shaped like a 
 winnowing fan and is concave in the middle—for the writers 
 on cosmography have been led toall these hypotheses, and each 
 man sets out to destroy the views of the others—that is no 
 reason why I should proceed to call our cosmography [i.e. 
 that based on a literal interpretation of the O.T.] less valuable 
 because Moses, the servant of God, has said nothing concern- 
 ing the shape of the earth and not stated that the earth’s 
 circumference is 180,000 stades.’?1 The last remark is a 
 reference to the estimate of the Greek Poseidonios. Now 
 this quotation is the utterance of one of the most enlightened 
 of the Fathers, and it makes us understand why the truth 
 was first suppressed and then forgotten by later ecclesiastical 
 writers. In one or two secular authors of the fifth century 
 —Macrobius and Martianus Capella for example—we still 
 find something of a defence of the Ptolemaic theory on this 
 point. But in the two ecclesiastical authors who exerted a 
 paramount influence on later ages, Cassiodorus (early sixth 
 century) and Isidore (early seventh century), the earth is 
 described as a flat disc. 
 
 We may now consider some of the geographical treatises 
 composed during the period under consideration. One of 
 the few works written in Greek is the treatise of Marcianus 
 of Heraclea, to which reference has already been made. It 
 cannot be said to add anything to knowledge, though it has 
 some value for correcting the text of Ptolemy that has come 
 down to us. For instance, when Marcianus relates that east 
 of the Seres (i.e. China) is an unknown land full of marshy 
 lakes, in which great reeds grow so close together that you 
 ean cross the lakes by walking on top of the reeds, he is 
 copying Ptolemy word for word. Supposing Ptolemy’s 
 text to be corrupt in some such passage as this, it is obvious 
 that Marcianus may be useful to a modern editor for restoring 
 the right reading in the older writer. Where Marcianus tries 
 
 1 Homil. in Hexaem., ix, 1 (= Migne, Patr. Graec., xxix, 188 C-D). 
 
26 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 to improve on his predecessors he fails miserably ; thus, in 
 estimating the size of Ceylon, he attempts to correct Ptolemy 
 and only makes matters very much worse. Ptolemy got 
 the shape of the island fairly right, but he made it many 
 times too large. In Marcianus’ version the size of the island 
 is even more exaggerated. Other Greek treatises of this 
 period, like the Outlines of Geography by Agathemeros, have 
 even less value than Marcianus. , 
 
 The Latin treatises are no more helpful; they repeat in 
 abbreviated form what was to be found in the writers of the 
 early empire. Thus Solinus (late third century) is mainly 
 indebted to the elder Pliny and to Pomponius Mela ; nor does 
 Orosius (early fifth century), who prefaces his history with a 
 short geographical survey of the Ancient world, do more than 
 excerpt his predecessors. Linguistically there are now and 
 then points of interest in these writers; for instance, Solinus 
 is the first to use the word mediterraneus, though as an 
 adjective, of what we now call the Mediterranean, while 
 Orosius is the earliest writer to use the term Asia Minor in its 
 modern sense. But the invariable practice of these later 
 authors is to copy and abridge their predecessors, and from 
 such work it is hopeless to expect much enlightenment. The 
 chief interest of most of these compilations lies in the fact 
 that their continued use can often be traced in the earlier 
 Middle Ages. Thus, a little tract, dating perhaps from the 
 fifth century, formed the basis of one section of a geographical 
 treatise composed by the ninth century monk Dicuil. Another 
 anonymous writer composed a work which bears the impres- 
 sive title, by no means warranted by the contents, of Descrip- 
 tion of the Whole World and its Races, and this is even more 
 instructive for our purpose. 
 
 What has come down to us is a Latin version of a Greek 
 original compiled late in the fourth century. The Latin 
 version is considerably later in date, and this version was in 
 its turn worked over by a Christian writer. We fortunately 
 possess both the earlier and the later Latin versions, and when 
 they are compared it is seen that the Christian adapter has 
 in a number of cases omitted sentences or sections that were 
 too pagan in tone. He omits, for example, a section on the 
 religions of Egypt, which is found in the earlier version. 
 Elsewhere his methods are even more arbitrary. The original 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a4.p. 300-500 27 
 
 writer had given some account of the Indian Brahmins: in the 
 Christian adaptation a remarkable story is superimposed of a 
 people who once dwelt in the Garden of Eden, and this is fitted 
 on to the description of the Brahmins, whose name is 
 suppressed. As it is a good example of the mingling of fact and 
 fiction the earlier part of the passage may be quoted: “‘ In the 
 regions of the East they tell us dwell the peoples of the 
 Camarini, whose land Moses described by the name of Eden. 
 From here a mighty river is said to flow forth and then to 
 branch off into four streams named Geon, Phison, Tigris, 
 and Euphrates. Now the men who dwell in the aforesaid 
 land are extremely pious and good. No blemish is to be found 
 in their bodies or in their minds. If you, reader, would wish 
 to learn something more definite about them, it is said that 
 they neither use bread such as is in common use amongst 
 us, nor any similar food, nor yet do they use fire such as we use. 
 Rather, we are assured that bread falls down like rain for their 
 daily need, and that they drink honey and poppy.! The 
 fire of their sun is of such intense heat that as soon as it is 
 diffused from heaven on to the earth all of them would be 
 burnt did they not quickly plunge into the river. There 
 they tarry until the fire returns again to the place from whence 
 it came.” ? It is easy to see how a few passages in the Old 
 Testament could be the germs of this fantasy ; the noteworthy 
 thing is that this passage is immediately followed by a rational 
 account of the simple life and habits of the Brahmins. The 
 regular immersions of these holy but amphibious dwellers 
 in Eden remind one a little of the practice of the early Slavs 
 who, we are told, ‘‘ could elude a foe by diving under water 
 and lying for hours on the bottom, breathing through a long 
 reed, which only the most experienced pursuer could detect.” 
 . Of far greater value than these treatises are the so-called 
 Antonine Itinerary, composed about the year A.D. 300, and 
 the Peutinger Table, the original form of which was slightly 
 later in date. The Antonine Itinerary gives in tabulated form 
 the distances between most of the towns and ports of the 
 Empire. Hitherto the prevailing view has been that it was 
 
 1 The MSS. reading is pipere, pepper. This is certainly a scribe’s 
 error for papavere, poppy. 
 
 2 Geogr. Graect Minores, ii, 513. 
 
 * J. B. Bury, Hist. of the Later Rom. Emp., ii, 294. 
 
28 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 in the nature of an official guide-book, but Kubitschek,! after 
 an exhaustive inquiry, has shown conclusively that the 
 Itinerary cannot have been compiled by any official having 
 access to either civil or military records, nor yet by any 
 trained geographer. The errors are too glaring for that, 
 and the difficulties, that have up to now been unexplained, 
 disappear if we regard the Itinerary as having been compiled 
 from a map of the Empire, such as that of Agrippa, by some 
 pupil or other inexperienced person. Even so, and for want 
 of more reliable records, it has great value for showing the 
 road system of the Empire and its administrative divisions 
 after the reorganization of Diocletian. 
 
 The Peutinger Table has been aptly described as “a sort of 
 panoramic chart on which towns, roads, mountains, forests, 
 etc., are marked without any approach to delineating the 
 outline of the countries, except in the vicinity of the Bosphorus 
 and Constantinople.” ? But, save for a few Christian 
 additions, the map represents the Empire as it was in the 
 first century A.D. 
 
 In the literature of this period other than the specialized 
 treatises to which reference has already been made, it can be 
 said that there is an advance in knowledge in one science 
 closely allied to geography. Ammianus Marcellinus, writing 
 in the second half of the fourth century, is for his geographical 
 details primarily indebted to Ptolemy, and often he is less 
 accurate than his authority. The advance in knowledge 
 is in the sphere of ethnology or anthropology, not of 
 geography. From Ammianus, from the surviving fragments 
 of the fifth century historian Priscus, and from Jordanes, the 
 Gothic writer of the sixth century, we get valuable information 
 about the customs and mode of life of the nomad invaders 
 of the Empire, Goths, Huns, and so forth. But the 
 geographical data for the movements of these peoples are of 
 the vaguest, making it at times singularly difficult to fix with 
 precision the district which this tribe or that occupied within 
 a narrow limit of time. That the spirit of inquiry, in so far 
 as it is concerned with geography, was not wholly dead just 
 before the time when Ammianus was composing his history, 
 
 * See his long articles, ‘‘ Itinerarien’’ and ‘“ Karten” in Pauly- 
 Wissowa-Kroll, Realencyclopaedie d. klass. Alertums wisschenschaft. 
 2 W. G. Holmes, The Age of Justinian and Theodora, i, 141, note I. 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a4.p. 300-500 29 
 
 is illustrated by a reference which has apparently been ignored 
 or overlooked by modern scholars. When the future Emperor 
 Julian was governor of Gaul (A.D. 361-2) he corresponded 
 with his friend Alypius, who at the time held a high official 
 position in the neighbouring province of Britain. In the 
 particular letter to which I refer the following passage occurs: 
 *‘ It happened that when you sent me your map I had just 
 recovered from my illness, but I was none the less glad on 
 that account to receive the drawing [or “‘ chart ’’] that you 
 sent. For not only does it contain diagrams better than any 
 hitherto made, but you have embellished it by adding those 
 lambic verses. ... In fact, the gift is such as no doubt it 
 well became you to give, while to me it is most agreeable to 
 receive it.”?1 The reference is tantalizingly incomplete, 
 which is perhaps one of the reasons for its neglect by modern 
 writers ; but it does seem a not unreasonable hypothesis, in 
 view of Alypius’ place of residence and official position, 
 that map and diagrams illustrated the geography of Britain. 
 Yet it is unlikely that Alypius’ researches ever became known 
 to any but his immediate friends, for they have left no trace 
 in later authors ; and it was only fifty years later that Britain 
 was evacuated by the Roman Government. In the sixth 
 century Procopius could pen a description of Britain, which 
 made at least a part of this island a fabulous land and a home 
 for departed spirits ! 
 
 One of the most cultured men of the fifth century was 
 undoubtedly, to give him his full name, Caius Solius 
 Apollinaris Sidonius. He held the highest civil offices and 
 later in life was consecrated bishop, and his letters are one of 
 the most valuable sources that we now possess for the history 
 of his age. Yet these letters give one the impression that 
 the man’s interests were singularly narrow, centred very 
 largely on the city of Rome and still more on that part of Gaul 
 in which he spent most of his life. Still, Gaul was at that 
 period largely occupied, as well as surrounded, by the so- 
 called Barbarians, and Sidonius must have had unique 
 opportunities for learning something of their customs and 
 institutions, and something of the geography of the districts 
 beyond the Rhine and Danube, from which they had come. 
 What do we find? Sidonius expresses the utmost surprise 
 
 1 Epistle 30. 
 
30 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 and admiration for his friend Syagrius for having “picked up 
 a knowledge of the German tongue” (probably Burgundian 
 is meant). Where geographical references occur in Sidonius 
 they are mere literary adornment, echoes of older poets and 
 writers whom he had read. When he speaks of “ voyaging in 
 imagination with our citizen of Tyana to Caucasus and Ind, 
 among the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia and the Brahmins of 
 Hindustan,’’! he merely shows us that he has read Philostratus’ 
 life of Apollonius of Tyana, written more than two centuries 
 before ; when he writes “‘ you come down to Langon harbour 
 with no less reluctance than one bound for the Danube 
 to resist the all-invading Massagetee, or for the dull flood of 
 Nile with all its awful crocodiles’’,? or when he refers to ‘‘ the 
 Sigambri on their marshes or the Alans of the Caucasus or 
 the mare-milking Geloni ’’,? he is merely cramming his writing 
 with allusions to earlier literature and cultivating what his 
 age considered a fine literary style, though his modern readers 
 when struggling with his prolix periods will often give it a less 
 complimentary name. At all events such passages have no 
 geographical or ethnographical value; the Alans, or a large 
 portion of them, had long since moved from the Caucasus, 
 while the allusions to the Massagete and the rest are mere 
 echoes of Vergil, Horace or Lucan. 
 
 From such precious writing one turns with relief to actual 
 records of travel at this time. Between s.p. 300 and 500 
 travelling within the Empire must often have been infinitely 
 more difficult and dangerous than in the earlier period, 
 and this is of course still more true of the districts beyond. 
 The records that have come down to us are not numerous, 
 though passing references to journeys undertaken, but with 
 no details given, are not rare. The accounts that have 
 survived tell of travels that had a religious, not a commercial 
 purpose, with one notable exception, to which we shall 
 return. The others are either narratives of pilgrimages to 
 holy places or expeditions for the conversion of the heathen. 
 One or two examples of each may with advantage be con- 
 sidered a little more in detail. 
 
 The so-called Jerusalem Itinerary preserves the record 
 
 1 Letters (transl. Dalton), viii, 3. 
 2 Ibid., viii, 12. 
 ® Thide iy, 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 31 
 
 of a pilgrimage undertaken in the year A.D. 333 from 
 Bordeaux to Palestine. The route followed was via 
 Milan to Aquileia and Sirmium, and thence, following the 
 course of the Danube most of the way, to Constantinople; 
 from there the pilgrims made their way through Asia 
 - Minor and Syria to the Holy Land. On the _ return 
 journey they went by way of Macedonia, Epirus, and 
 Rome. Unfortunately this record, apart from a more 
 detailed description of Jerusalem and_ neighbourhood, 
 contains practically nothing but the names of post stations 
 and caravanserais on the route, with the distances in leagues 
 or miles from point to point. Only rarely is there 
 any further comment. Still this Itinerary is of considerable 
 importance for the evidence it supplies regarding the Imperial 
 road system at this date. 
 
 The narrative of the Abbess Etheria, is, however, of much 
 more human interest.! In 386, or thereabouts, the Abbess 
 started out from Southern Gaul to visit the Holy Land. The 
 beginning of her story is lost, for when the account, as we now 
 have it, opens she is already in the act of ascending Mount 
 Sinai. After a considerable stay in the Sinai district, she made 
 her way across a stretch of desert to Pelusium and thence she 
 followed the coastal road to Palestine. She made some long 
 distance excursions from Jerusalem, e.g. to the eastern side of 
 the Dead Sea, and finally set out via Antioch to Edessa in 
 Northern Mesopotamia. She then returned to Antioch and 
 from there passed on through Asia Minor to Constantinople. As 
 some of her narrative is lost, we do not know all that she saw, 
 but we learn that she was away from home for four years. She 
 proceeded in leisurely fashion and, being a person of impor- 
 tance, occasionally had a military escort. She received a 
 friendly reception from the clergy and monastic communities 
 wherever she went, and was keenly interested in all she saw. 
 A modern reader can, however, but regret that the reverend 
 lady’s interests were so exclusively spiritual. A little more— 
 we will not say profanity—but a little more interest in things 
 secular is what we should like to find in her, for she could have 
 told us so much of the condition of the countries through 
 which she passed and of the people she saw, in a period about 
 many aspects of which we know singularly little. It is no 
 
 1 For a fuller reference to the Abbess Etheria see next chapter. 
 
32 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 doubt improving to the mind to have a description of the 
 cave where Moses rested before and after he received the 
 Tables of the Law, or to learn the very place where he stood 
 when the Lord appeared to him in the Burning Bush. 
 Perhaps we are provoked to smile when she tells us that she 
 saw the very spot, near the ancient Sodom, where the salt pillar 
 stood that was once Lot’s wife. She assures her fellow 
 nuns, for whom her narrative was written, that the pillar was 
 no longer to be seen, but the local bishop informed her that 
 it had been standing there till a few years before. And yet, 
 although Etheria commands our deep respect both for her 
 intrepid enterprise and for a general saneness of outlook 
 which, in spite of occasional lapses, is in striking contrast 
 to the childish credulity of later pilgrims, nevertheless, we 
 should give much to have an occasional remark about the 
 conditions of life of the town and country dweller, or a passing 
 judgment on the degree of material prosperity to be found, 
 say in Palestine or Syria at that date, or even a stray comment 
 on sites and buildings of purely secular interest. Only rarely 
 she permits herself to comment on the beautiful scenery in 
 some spot or on the fine vineyards and orchards that she 
 saw on her journeys; she also mentions that there was a 
 small Roman garrison at Clysma, near the modern Suez, 
 but such remarks are the exception in her tale; the visiting 
 of all possible sites mentioned in the Scriptures is her 
 real purpose, and we can see that the inventiveness of her 
 guides was fully equal to satisfying all her eager questions, 
 From pilgrims we pass easily to missionary journeys. 
 There is a remarkable adventure, which is related by several 
 ecclesiastical historians as occurring about the year A.D. 330. 
 A certain philosopher of Tyre, Meropius by name, set 
 out for “India”, and was accompanied on his travels 
 by two young boys Aidesius and Frumentius. What pre- 
 cisely is meant by “‘ India” it is difficult to say for reasons 
 which will be indicated hereafter. At any rate, on their 
 way home the travellers’ ship put in at a harbour for water and 
 food somewhere on the coast of Ethiopia, that is to say, 
 what we should now call Abyssinia. Meropius and the 
 entire ship’s crew were killed by the savage natives, but the 
 two boys, in the words of the oldest historian who records 
 these events, ‘‘ were discovered beneath a tree in meditation 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a4.p. 300-500 33 
 
 and engaged in the preparation of their lessons.”?1 Such 
 virtuous diligence had its reward, for the natives had com- 
 passion on Aiédesius’ and Frumentius’ youth, spared their 
 lives and took them to the king of the country. They 
 received employment at his court, rose high in the royal 
 favour and began the teaching of Christianity there. On 
 the death of the king, Frumentius was made tutor to the new 
 king, who was still a child. Ultimately the two men were 
 allowed to leave; Addesius returned to Tyre, but Frumentius 
 made his way to Alexandria ; there he interviewed Athanasius, 
 and was soon after made first bishop of Abyssinia. Here 
 the historian ends his narrative, but it is known that some 
 years later Frumentius was succeeded by an Arian bishop, 
 Theophilus, since an Arian Emperor was now installed at 
 Constantinople. Theophilus was a native of Diu island, off 
 the Gujerat peninsula to the west of the Gulf of Cambay. 
 He went on a mission to the Himyarites in South Arabia, 
 visited the island of Dioscorides, now called Socotra, off 
 the south Arabian coast, and thence went to Axum in 
 Abyssinia. He does not appear to have been allowed to stay 
 there very long. It is not till the very end of the fifth or 
 the beginning of the sixth century that we hear of further 
 missionary activities in those parts. 
 
 As in the itineraries of pilgrims, so in the accounts 
 of the ecclesiastical historians, scarcely any geographical 
 information is given. Early in the fourth century we 
 further hear of the conversion of the Iberians of the 
 Caucasus. The story of this conversion is full of the most 
 miraculous particulars, but their embassy to the Emperor 
 at Constantinople is doubtless an historic fact. They asked 
 for alliance and treaty with the Empire, and also requested 
 that priests be sent to them to propagate the Gospel. It is 
 somewhat remarkable that no knowledge of Christianity had 
 filtered through to them before, and it seems to confirm, what 
 is made probable by other evidence, that the northern trade 
 route to the Far East had practically fallen into disuse by this 
 time. Again it is not till the sixth century that we get some 
 more information about these people, and one writer who 
 refers to them, Theophanes, adds the interesting comment 
 that their chief city is Tiphilis. So far as I am aware, this is 
 
 1 Rufinus, x, 9. 
 
34 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 the earliest mention of Tiflis, the modern capital of the 
 Caucasus region, and the same historian is also the first 
 Westerner to refer to the Turks by that name. 
 
 It was hinted above that a difficulty often confronts the 
 modern inquirer when he meets with the name “ India ”’ or 
 ** Indians ”’ in writers of his time. ‘‘ It is to be observed,”’ 
 says Professor Bury, “that the cessation of direct trade 
 with the East was reflected in the decline of geographical 
 knowledge illustrated by the misuse of ‘India’ to designate 
 Aithiopia, which is frequent in Greek and Latin writers from 
 the fourth century.”?! Thus we cannot be sure that Meropius 
 and his boy companions really did visit India before they met 
 with disaster on their homeward voyage, or whether their 
 travels were confined to the Red Sea. The fact is that all 
 the southern regions situated east of the Nile were commonly 
 referred to as India; the Nile is referred to as the boundary 
 between Asia and Africa, and thus we find, for example, the 
 sixth century historian Procopius describing that river as 
 flowing from India to Egypt, and dividing the ght) country 
 into two, till it reached the sea. 
 
 Here we may pause for a moment to consider that remark- 
 able person, Cosmas, nicknamed “ Indicopleustes ”? or the 
 Indian traveller. Chronologically he belongs to the sixth 
 century, but much of the information he gives is doubtless 
 true of the age immediately preceding his own, and we are 
 therefore justified in including him in our survey. The main 
 purpose of his Christian Topography, written about A.D. 550 is, 
 in the words of Gibbon, ‘‘ to confute the impious heresy of 
 those who maintain that the earth is a globe and not a flat 
 oblong table as it is represented in the Scriptures,’”’ but in 
 his earlier years Cosmas had himself travelled considerably, 
 and references to his experiences are scattered through the 
 earlier books of his work or collected in Book XI. This 
 book, though now attached to the Christian Topography, in 
 reality belonged to a lost work recording his travels. Cosmas 
 visited Ethiopia, i.e. Abyssinia, and voyaged in the Persian 
 Gulf; he also went to Socotra, and he further quotes a 
 merchant, Sopatros, who had been to Ceylon. He speaks of 
 Christian Churches in that island and in several districts 
 
 1 History of the Later Roman Empire, ii, 318, note 2. 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 35 
 
 on the West coast of India; the bishop under whose care 
 these Christians were had been ordained, he says, in Persia. 
 Cosmas further has the distinction of being the first and the 
 only ancient writer to enunciate the truth that beyond China 
 on the east is the ocean. He speaks of “ the land of Tzinista, 
 beyond which is no other land. For the Ocean encircles it 
 on the Kast”. Ptolemy and earlier geographers had put 
 terra incognita beyond the land of the Sinai and the Seres. 
 And yet it is at least doubtful whether Cosmas ever himself 
 visited India, though most modern writers state categorically 
 that he did. There is really nothing in the information 
 that he gives about that country or about Ceylon which he 
 could not have learnt from Sopatros or other travellers. 
 Thus, he describes the Indian ox in a delightful way : ‘‘ This 
 wild ox is a large Indian animal, and from it is got what is 
 called toupha (i.e. a chowry or fly-flapper), with which 
 commanders of armies decorate their horses and banners 
 when taking the field. If his tail, it is said, catches in a tree, 
 he does not seek to move off, but stands stock-still, having 
 a strong aversion to lose even a single hair of his tail. So 
 the people of the place come and cut off his tail, and then 
 the beast, having lost it all, makes his escape. Such is the 
 nature of this animal.’”?! The words “it is said’’, suggest 
 that Cosmas had not seen the patient either before or after the 
 operation! In general it is to be noted that Cosmas on a 
 number of occasions remarks that he had himself seen a 
 particular thing, but he only does this when speaking of the 
 lands bordering on the Red Sea. So perhaps ‘‘ Indicopleustes ”’ 
 should really be rendered ‘‘ Abyssinian” or ‘“‘ Red Sea 
 navigator’’. With South Arabia, and especially with Ethiopia 
 or Abyssinia, he was clearly well acquainted. After describing 
 a number of sights and occurrences he says, no doubt quite 
 truthfully, ‘‘ The facts which I have just recorded fell partly 
 under my own observation and partly were told to me by 
 traders who had been to those parts.”” He gives us a remark- 
 able account of a great expedition of traders which was 
 dispatched every other year by the orders of the king of 
 Abyssinia from the capital, Axum, into the interior. The 
 commodity for which the merchants were sent was gold; in 
 
 1 Cosmas (McCrindle’s translation), p. 360. 
 
36 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 exchange for it they gave the natives salt, iron, and cattle. 
 Cosmas describes the very primitive methods of barter em- 
 ployed and tells us that the expedition was away six months. 
 The return journey was made with all possible speed “lest’’, 
 to quote him again, “‘ they should be overtaken by winter and 
 its rains. For the sources of the river Nile lie somewhere 
 in these parts, and in winter, on account of the heavy rains, 
 the numerous rivers which they generate obstruct the path 
 of the traveller’.1 The sources mentioned here are 
 the sources of the Blue Nile, to which Ptolemy had also 
 referred four centuries earlier. As regards the East Coast of 
 Africa, Cosmas does not appear to have been further than the 
 Somali coast. No attempt has been made here to discuss 
 Cosmas’ geographical theories, for two reasons : first, because 
 they concern the theologian more than the geographer or 
 the historian and, second, it is quite certain that, to use a 
 colloquialism, they “did not catch on’. That is to say, 
 Cosmas’ Christian Topography did not influence later writers 
 in the field of geography. 
 
 An attempt has been made to show that in the period 
 A.D. 3800-500 the activities of Rome’s attackers had 
 virtually closed large tracts of country to the traveller, 
 whatever his particular aims; further, that what records 
 of travel we possess for this age can only in a few instances 
 be said to add anything to the geographical knowledge 
 possessed in the preceding centuries, while, on the other hand, 
 truths that had been known to Ptolemy or Marinus had been 
 forgotten or condemned as impious; and, last, that the 
 geographical treatises composed in this period not only add 
 nothing new, but merely repeat in a shortened, and often in a 
 garbled form, what is to be found in writers like Pomponius 
 Mela and Pliny, whose sum total of knowledge about the 
 geography of the ancient world, the oikoumene, was less per- 
 fect than that of Marinus and Ptolemy. And here a word 
 must be added about the geographical textbooks used in the 
 earlier Middle Agesin the West. It has already been pointed 
 out that some of the treatises composed between A.D. 800 and 
 500 continued to be used at a later date. Another little 
 book which enjoyed great popularity was a sketchy geography 
 
 1 Ons citi Daa 
 
DECAY OF KNOWLEDGE a.p. 300-500 37 
 
 put together by a certain Julius Honorius. It owed its large 
 circulation mainly to the fact that Cassiodorus, the father 
 of medieval scholarship, had recommended it to monastic 
 students as a textbook. At the beginning of the seventh 
 century Isidore of Seville composed a work in twenty sections 
 which was a compendium of all the arts and sciences. To 
 compile this book Isidore had recourse to older treatises of 
 varying degrees of value dealing with the separate subjects, 
 -and his compilation very largely superseded the older works 
 in the centuries that followed. The distinguished American 
 scholar, Professor E. K. Rand, remarks in one of his most 
 sprightly essays : ‘‘ One of the most useful rules that I know 
 for guiding the investigator in medieval fields is to inquire 
 first ‘ what does St. Isidore say about it?’’?! The universal 
 use of Isidore in the Middle Ages implied in this sentence 
 is not an exaggeration, and nothing illustrates this better than 
 the subject with which this paper is concerned. Wherever 
 you have a geographical treatise or a section on geography 
 in a larger work during the next few centuries you are sure 
 to find that Isidore is either the sole source, or at least one 
 of the most important. Several anonymous geographical 
 poems and treatises of the eight and ninth centuries depend 
 mainly on him, and in the Liber Glossarum, that huge 
 encyclopedia cwm dictionary compiled early in the eighth 
 century, the geographical sections are culled primarily from that 
 author. The geographical sections in Orosius are also con- 
 stantly used or reproduced, as for example in the Liber 
 Glossarum and in the early part of the Venerable Bede’s 
 Ecclesiastical History. What then do we find? Simply that 
 the geographical treatises put together in these centuries bear 
 little or no relation to the times in which they were composed. 
 Dicuil’s book has the distinction of being the first geographical 
 work composed in the Frankish Kingdom; the author used 
 several sources besides Isidore, most of them earlier than the 
 latter, but there are scarcely any references to the Frankish 
 Kingdom and none at all to the remoter parts of Germany, 
 for instance to Saxony or Bavaria. Instead he repeats vague 
 statements about Germany from Pliny. In Pliny’s day 
 most of what we now call Germany was terra incognita, but 
 
 1 Philolog. Quarterly (Iowa), 1922, 1, 294. 
 
38 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 that was not the case in Dicuil’s time, when it should have been 
 possible to obtain accurate information about the more 
 easterly parts of that country. Dicuil had not even seen 
 Tacitus’ Germania, from which one may perhaps deduce 
 that there was no manuscript of that work in the Frankish 
 kingdom at that time. 
 
 ' It has seemed desirable to indicate, however inadequately, 
 the sources from which in the age following the break up of 
 the Western Empire geographical knowledge was acquired and 
 books on that subject were composed. The work of Ptolemy 
 might never have existed for all the influence it exerted in 
 those centuries. As for our subject in the period of the later 
 empire, one is, perhaps reluctantly, compelled to acquiesce in 
 the severe judgment of a German scholar on this topic: 
 ** New countries were not discovered; the empire became 
 smaller not greater ; trade relations, thanks to the wars in 
 the east, the south and the north, became more and more 
 restricted ; besides, there was no longer any question of 
 research in industry and of the spirit of discovery. Thus the 
 only books that were put together were compilations from 
 older works.”’ 1 
 
 1 W. Schmid, Gesch. d. griechisch, Liter., ii, 852. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES, A.D. 500-800 
 
 By The Rev. Prof. CLAUDE JENKINS, D.D., F.S.A. 
 
 14 renee grows in the island of Madagascar a tree of which 
 all have heard. Its long straight stem is crowned 
 with leaves spread vertically, but like a fan. At its base 
 collects water wherewith the wayfarer may slake his thirst 
 and so pursue his road refreshed and comforted. The student 
 of early medieval pilgrimages may often dream that he sees 
 on the margin of his research a group of such travellers’ 
 trees in the figures known or anonymous of the chroniclers 
 and writers of the times. But the stems of narrative have 
 a symmetry only too often deceptive, the fan-like crown of 
 travellers’ tales soars beyond the reach of his perhaps too 
 prosaic mind, and the moisture which trickles to the base 
 affords a scanty draught for the thirst engendered by the 
 sawdust of the modern scientific method. Yet there is more 
 to win than discloses itself to the first view. The roots lie 
 hid beneath the soil of many lands—Ireland and Britain, 
 Gaul and the Teutonic regions, Italy, Spain, and many 
 another yet further removed; and a section of the stem 
 discloses the rings of growth which tell the story of the years. 
 
 The period assigned to this chapter and the scope of its 
 subject are alike limited ; but he would be a poor medievalist 
 who should allow himself to be trammelled unduly by such 
 considerations. Certainly the student who approaches a 
 medieval writer of travels with the expectation of finding 
 the information set forth with the succinct brevity of a 
 Baedeker will not always be disappointed, and very precious 
 may be the first part of the Itinerary of the Bordeaux 
 Pilgrim of the fourth century to a man with an eye for 
 country. But not less precious for other reasons are the 
 apparent irrelevancies when a narrator halts in his description 
 to tell a story which he has learnt from a fellow traveller 
 
40 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 by the way, or heard from the lips of a holy bishop or 
 other unimpeachable authority, to introduce some marvel 
 of what may seem to us very unnatural science, or to 
 confirm a story by what we may regard as a piece of 
 scriptural exegesis no less strange. Our copy of Herodotus 
 may be studded thickly with the injurious reflexions 
 of a modern commentator; but the fame of the Father 
 of History shines with a lustre quite undimmed by such 
 criticisms ; and in the same way to stigmatize a medieval 
 writer as credulous or superstitious is to throw away at the 
 outset the key to the interpretation of what he writes, to 
 falsify history through our own anachronisms, and to treat 
 as negligible what may be the most valuable thing in the 
 narrative before us—the disclosure of the man who wrote 
 and of the age in which he lived. 
 
 How then shall we begin our own peregrinations through the 
 literature ? We will remind ourselves that a peregrination 
 is a journeying abroad, travelling through a foreign country 
 far from one’s own home; but it is not therefore necessarily 
 a pilgrimage, though it may be one. In other words many 
 of the journeys of Celtic monks to the continent were 
 peregrinations, but they were not, like those of Etheria, 
 pilgrimages in the strict sense. Let us begin with one which 
 purports perhaps to fall within the period with which we are 
 mainly concerned and has some claim to both titles. It 
 can be read conveniently in the new translation of the Life 
 of St. David by Mr. Wade-Evans.! 
 
 St. David is bidden by an angel to go to Jerusalem, accom- 
 panied by two companions, also angelically warned, one of 
 whom is Eiludd or Teilo, the other Padarn. ‘When they had 
 sailed over the Britannic sea and were come into the Gauls 
 and were hearing the strange languages of diverse nations, 
 father David was endowed with the gift of tongues like that 
 apostolic gathering of old, lest when in need among foreign 
 peoples they might want an interpreter, and also that they 
 might confirm the faith of others with the word of truth. At 
 length they arrive at the confines of the desired city, 
 Jerusalem,’ where they are received and placed in ‘ three most 
 honourable seats’ by the Patriarch who has been warned 
 by an angel in a dream to expect them. ‘ Then, supported 
 
 1 A, W. Wade-Evans, Life of St. David (S.P.C.K., 1923). 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 41 
 
 by the divine choice, he promotes holy David to the archi- 
 episcopate,’ and urges him and his companions to confute the 
 Jews. ‘They obey the command. They preach, each of 
 them, every day. Their preaching becomes acceptable. 
 Many come together to the faith. Others they strengthen.’ 
 When they set out to return ‘the Patriarch presented father 
 David with four gifts, to wit, a consecrated Altar, whereon 
 he was wont to consecrate the Lord’s Body, which, potent 
 in innumerable miracles, has never been seen by men from the 
 death of its pontiff but, covered with skin veils, lies hidden 
 away. Also, a remarkable Bell, which too is renowned for 
 miracles. A Bachall [i.e. pastoral staff] and a tunic woven 
 with gold. The Bachall, resplendent with glorious miracles, 
 is extolled throughout the whole of our country for its wonders. 
 ‘** But because,” said the Patriarch, ‘‘ they are a labour for 
 you to carry on the journey, whilst going back to your country, 
 return in peace. I shall send them over after you.’’’ The 
 gifts are accordingly transported by angels, David receiving 
 his gift ‘in the monastery called Llan Gyvelach’, the others 
 in their several monasteries. ‘Therefore it is that the 
 common people call them gifts from heaven.’ 
 
 What inferences, if any, are we to draw from this story ? 
 In the form here quoted it is not earlier than Rhygyvarch 
 or Ricemarch who lived at the end of the eleventh century. 
 He claims to have based it on ‘ very old writings ... in 
 the old style of the ancients ’, and he connects the story with 
 a subsequent synod directed against a revival of Pelagianism 
 in which Dewi achieved recognition as archbishop with the 
 consent of ‘all the bishops, kings, princes, nobles, and all 
 the grades of the whole Britannic race’ and ‘ his monastery 
 too is declared the metropolis of the whole country’. If 
 we accept as the old Welsh tradition! his account which places 
 the birth of St. David thirty years after the arrival of 
 St. Patrick in Ireland (c. 432), so that St. David would be born 
 in 462, then Ricemarch himself is separated from St. David by 
 more than five and a half centuries. If we accept the view of 
 Bishop Basil Jones and Mr. Freeman, which places St. David’s 
 establishment of his see early in the seventh century,” he 
 
 1 Wade-Evans, op. cit., pp. 2-3. 
 
 2 W. B. Jones and FE. A. Freeman, History and Antiquities of 
 St. Davids (London: Parker, 1856), p. 257. 
 
A2 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 is separated by a century less, but still by 450 years. Every- 
 thing then will depend upon the credit we attach to the 
 mention of the ‘ old writings’. It is an argument in favour 
 of their real existence that Ricemarch seems more than once 
 to be reproducing statements the meaning of which he does 
 not understand. But if they existed, and if they contained 
 the association of Dewi with the Synod of Brevi and the 
 Synod of Victory, which are fixed for other reasons about 
 569,! then did the writer realize that St. David if alive would 
 have been 107 years of age? The answer is that in any case 
 Ricemarch, and perhaps the documents before him, made 
 David’s life extend to 147 years.2. Now the earliest form of 
 the ‘ Annales Cambriae’ that we have, a MS. of the tenth 
 century, merely says that David died in 601.2 It does not 
 exclude the possibility of his association with the two Synods, 
 nor does it confirm it. On the other hand such association 
 would be impossible if we accepted the date given for David’s 
 death, viz. 546, by William of Malmesbury‘ a statement 
 which is difficult to set aside so easily as is done by Mr. Henry 
 Bradley °; and while it may seem rash to accept a fact from 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, it does not seem certain that he is 
 not right in attributing David’s burial to Maelgwyn king of 
 Gwynedd,® who died probably in 547, 
 
 The story of Ricemarch and perhaps of his authority 
 is a patent effort to establish the supremacy of St. David’s 
 see over the whole of the Church in Wales. We may venture 
 to suggest that the substratum upon which the whole has 
 been built is a tradition that David had visited Palestine. 
 This was supposed to be confirmed by the existence of such 
 relics as the portable bell mentioned later by Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis 7 as existing in his time in the church of Glascwm, 
 a bell, he says, ‘ of very great virtue, which they call by its 
 
 1 A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Eccl. Documents 
 (Clarendon Press, 1869), i, 116-17. 
 
 * Wade-Evans, op. cit., p. 29. 
 
 * Y Cymmrodor, ix, 156, cf. Wade-Evans, op. cit., pp. x, 114. 
 
 * De Antiq. Glaston. Eccl. in T. Gale, Hist. Brit., etc., Script. xv 
 (Oxford, 1691), i, 299. 
 
 5 Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v. ‘ David’. 
 
 * Hist. Regum. Brit., xi, 3. 
 
 oy Ei ft Kambriae, i, 1 (Rolls Series, ed. J. F. Dimock, 1868, 
 vi, 18). 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 43 
 
 proper name “ Bangu ”’ [i.e. “‘the dear, loud one’’?.], which 
 also is said to have been St. David’s.’ That the tradition 
 did not amount to more thana barestatement of a pilgrimage 
 may be inferred from the fact that the story does not venture 
 on an itinerary but transfers David and his companions 
 straight from Gaul to Jerusalem. That it is early seems 
 at least to be suggested by the further fact that Ricemarch 
 does not mention as received from the Patriarch any relics 
 connected with the sacred associations of Jerusalem itself, 
 an omission which in the circumstances is noteworthy. 
 Has the tradition itself any foundation in fact, or is it, as 
 Mr. Bradley says, obviously an unmixed romance, as we may 
 agree with him in holding the story of David’s ‘ consecration 
 as archbishop by the patriarch’ to be? On the whole it 
 would seem that the balance of probability does not justify 
 us in wholly rejecting it. It may be said that we have pre- 
 served very little of the good bishop’s detailed story ; but 
 at any rate we have not impeached his veracity, and have 
 admitted the possibility that there may have been some 
 vague foundation for what we hold him to have been sincere 
 in believing. 
 
 Dom Gougaud, in his work on Gaelic Pioneers of 
 Christianity has been at pains to collect descriptions of the 
 motives which led men to leave their native land and flock to 
 the continent in a voluntary exile ‘ for the love of God’, * for 
 the name of the Lord’, ‘for the name of Christ’, ‘ pro 
 remedio animae’, ‘to gain a country in heaven’, and the 
 like.2 In some cases it may be difficult to distinguish such a 
 motive from what we usually associate with a pilgrimage. 
 Dom Gougaud, however, sees most of such travellers rather 
 as voluntary exiles, ‘for the real pilgrim betakes himself 
 to the sanctuary which is the aim of his special devotion ; 
 then, his pious journey over, he returns to his own land and 
 resumes his usual life.” The distinction is perhaps sound and 
 is certainly convenient. 
 
 The instinct for travel, or even for wandering, is innate in 
 some natures in all ages, perhaps in far more than we often 
 realize. But it was not universal. There is a story in the 
 
 1 Wade-Evans, op. cit., pp. 82, 107. 
 2 Dom. L. Gougaud, Gaelic Pioneers of Christianity (Dublin, 
 M. H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1923), pp. 5-8. 
 
AA TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 ‘Life of St. Columba’ of a wife who told the sixth century 
 saint that she did not refuse to undertake the whole care of a 
 house or even, if he bade her, go overseas (to which a later 
 editor adds,‘ to go on a journey to Jerusalem, if you bid me’), 
 and to continue in a monastery of young girls : the one thing 
 nothing would induce her to do was to live with her husband.? 
 It is clear that the preference is for the lesser of two evils. 
 But it is both devotion and enthusiasm for sacred antiquities 
 which inspires people like Etheria of Aquitaine, whose 
 * Peregrinatio’ was discovered by Giovanni Francesco 
 Gamurrini just over forty years ago. It was contained in 
 an eleventh century MS. at Arezzo, but it is to the fourth 
 century that the story belongs. The MS. is thus separated 
 from the journey by some 600 years, and though the narrative 
 was written for the benefit of other nuns at home it does not 
 seem to have acquired celebrity : at least we do not find it 
 quoted by others until much later. There are, however, 
 demonstrable, if unacknowledged, quotations from it in the 
 work of Peter the Deacon in the twelfth century. It is worth 
 while to remember this, for some of the most serious problems 
 both of historical and geographical writings of the Middle 
 Ages arise from the propensity of later writers to use, often 
 indeed without indication that they are doing so, the narra- 
 tives and descriptions of their predecessors. Only too often 
 we think that we are reading, for example, the work of some 
 medieval author, and so indeed we are ; but what is before us 
 is, in fact, only an adaptation of Pliny the elder, or Solinus, 
 or some other writer of a far earlier age, and sometimes 
 we would give a good deal to be absolutely certain in the 
 case of a great story of travel like that of Cosmas Indico- 
 pleustes how much was the fruit of his own personal observa- 
 tion, how much borrowed from earlier sources. 
 
 Etheria belongs, as has been said, to the fourth century’: ; 
 but since her narrative contains features which illustrate 
 what follows some reference to it is excusable and even 
 necessary. It is a mere accident of transmission that her 
 ‘Peregrinatio’, as we have it, opens with a sight of Sinai, 
 where the pilgrims were received ‘ humanely ’ in the monas- 
 tery. And whatever may be thought of some other writers, 
 
 1 Vita Sancti Columbae auctore Adamnano, ii, 41. 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 45 
 
 she at least deserved to see the ‘ Tree of Truth’ of which she 
 tells us: it was a sycamore-tree said to have been planted 
 by Moses and Aaron ; it was very old and therefore very small, 
 but it still bore fruit.1 The pilgrims travel at any rate in 
 some places under the protection of an armed guard, and as 
 they go Etheria gathers material in the way of stories. Her 
 narrative bears witness to a real passion for travel, for it is 
 the record not of one expedition but of several, and includes 
 a stay of three years at Jerusalem. She journeys to Mesopo- 
 tamia, where she is impressed by the swiftness of Kuphrates, 
 which is ‘larger than the Rhone’. She visits the ‘ martyr- 
 dom ’ of St. Thomas at Edessa, reads there some works with 
 which his name was associated, sees thé marble portrait of 
 the great king * Agbar’, who, unlike the Blessed Thomas, 
 believed though he had not seen, and sees too the famous letter 
 which he was said to have received from our Lord. There 
 are copies of it in her own land, ‘ but these are longer,’ she 
 tells nuns for whose benefit she is writing, *‘ you shall read 
 them.’2 At the shrine of St. Tecla in Cilicia she reads the 
 Acts of Tecla : it is characteristic of her whole attitude to do 
 so; and in places of sacred associations she reads where- 
 ever possible the Biblical passages in which they are men- 
 tioned. What strikes us is the extraordinary humanness and 
 simplicity of it all, and also the amazing endurance, for the 
 narrative includes also a journey through Cappadocia, 
 Galatia, and Bithynia to the scene of the martyrdom of 
 St. Eufemia at Chalcedon, with the project at the end of a 
 new journey to Ephesus. 
 
 There is apparently a gap or dislocation in the MS. and 
 the preface to the long discription of Lent and the Holy Week 
 at Jerusalem is wanting. But what remains is of absorbing 
 interest. Some things must be noted for the sake of contrast 
 with the accounts of later pilgrims even if much has to be 
 omitted. We must pass over the description of the sermons 
 after Epiphany, when all the priests as well as the bishop 
 preached, in succession as it would seem, upon the same 
 
 1 “ dendros alethiae,’ S. Siluiae Peregrinatio, viii, §§ 3-4. [Corp. 
 Script Eccl. Lat. xxxviiii, Itinera Hierosolymitana, ed. P. Geyer 
 (Vindobonae: Tempsky, 1898), pp. 48-9.] 
 
 Pepi XIX, 6. 20 (ed... Geyer,. p.\.64): 
 
46 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 passage of Scripture,! and of the Lent which lasted for eight 
 weeks ; the account of what a fast means and of the instruc- 
 tion of candidates for baptism in the Scriptures and the 
 Creed, an instruction which occupied three hours a day for 
 seven weeks and was conducted by the bishop himself in the 
 presence of fathers and mothers and others. There is a 
 significant note that if anyone is a pilgrim (peregrinus) unless 
 he has testimonies of character from those who know him 
 he will not so easily attain to baptism.? 
 
 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre includes both ‘ Gol- 
 gotha’ and the Sepulchre. Constantine’s church there was 
 dedicated in 335, and destroyed by the Persians in 614. We 
 have to picture to ourselves one large building at the western 
 end of which is a round church, and in the centre of this again 
 is the Sepulchre. Such is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
 or, as it is also called, the ‘ Anastasis ’, or Church of the 
 Resurrection. Eastward of it is an atrium surrounded by a 
 colonnade, in one angle of which is ‘ Golgotha’. Still further 
 eastward is the basilica of Constantine, which is called the 
 ‘Martyrium’. This has its apse at the west end, and beneath 
 it is the crypt of St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, and 
 below that the crypt of the Invention of the Cross which she 
 discovered. Beyond the Martyrium and eastward of it again 
 is a rectangular court or atrium also with colonnades. The 
 whole of what we have been describing can thus be regarded, 
 as has been said, as one building with several divisions, each 
 with its sacred associations and each used for its appropriate 
 services. Most sacred of all is the reputed Sepulchre in the 
 centre of the round church, or, as Etheria calls it, the basilica.® 
 It is a cavern guarded by a railing and having a lamp burning 
 within. 
 
 We cannot stay to discuss the value of the authorities for 
 or against the traditional story of the Invention of the Cross 
 in 826; but there are two points which concern our present 
 purpose. «First is the reference of St. Cyril of Jerusalem 
 twenty years later to pieces of the Cross as having been 
 
 1 St. Le. il, 21-39; ibid. xxvi (ed. Geyer, p. 77). 
 
 2 Ibid., xlv, § 4 (ed. Geyer, p. 97). 
 
 3 Ibid., xxiv, § 10; xxv, § 2 (ed. Geyer, pp. 73, 75) ; but Etheria 
 distinguishes the basilica and the Anastasis, ibid., xxiv, § 8 (ed. 
 
 Geyer, p. 73). Cf. H. T. F. Duckworth, The Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.), p. 96. 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 47 
 
 distributed throughout the world+; and second, Etheria’s 
 description of the Exposition of the Cross on Good Friday 
 in the Chapel of Golgotha.? The bishop, she says, sat in a 
 bishop’s seat (cathedra), having in front of him a table with 
 a wooden frame (mensa_ sublinteata). A_ silver-gilt box 
 (loculus) is brought in which is the wood of the holy cross. 
 It is opened, and the wood of the cross and the titulus or 
 inscription are placed upon the table. The bishop, still 
 seated, places the tips of his fingers upon the wood, and the 
 deacons standing around keep guard. The people, both the 
 faithful (i.e. the baptized) and the catechumens approach 
 one by one. Bending down they touch the wood, first with 
 forehead, then with eyes, kiss it, and pass on. The guard of 
 deacons was established, so Etheria tells us, because on one 
 occasion some one took the opportunity in venerating the 
 wood to bite offa piece and carry it away in his mouth. Asthe 
 people moveon they pass a deacon who is holding Solomon’s 
 ring and the horn with which kings were anointed. The horn 
 they kiss, but a lacuna in the MS. prevents us from saying 
 what they did to the ring. We shall do well, for reasons 
 which will appear, to bear these details in mind, and also that 
 when it is said that people go to Sion to pray at the column 
 at which our Lord was scourged, the bare fact is mentioned 
 without further description of the column. 
 
 The date generally assigned to Etheria’s narrative is about 
 385, 1.e. some sixty years after the Invention of the Cross 
 and half a century after the dedication of Constantine’s 
 great church at Jerusalem. No one who reads it can fail 
 to be impressed with its historical value, and if so no apology 
 is needed for the space given to it, since, if it can be relied 
 upon, it affords a standard with which later narratives may 
 be compared. We have to pass over nearly a century and a 
 half till we come to the work known as the ‘Situation’ or 
 ‘Topography of the Holy Land’. Of its author, Theodosius, 
 we know practically nothing save that he was in deacon’s 
 orders and was possibly an archdeacon; that he has an 
 interest in describing distances and an evident taste for 
 recording marvels; and that from internal evidence he appears 
 to have written about 4.p. 530. Bearing in mind what has 
 
 1 Cyrill. Hierosol., Catech., iv, 10; x, 19; xiii, 4; to him its genuine- 
 
 ness was beyond question. 
 2S. Siluiae Peregy., xxxvii, §§ 1-3 (ed. Geyer, p. 88). 
 
48 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 been said about Etheria and quoted from her, let us look at 
 Theodosius’ description of the scene. 
 
 ‘In the City of Jerusalem,’ he says, ‘at the Lord’s 
 Sepulchre there is the place of Calvary ; there Abraham offered 
 his own son as a whole burnt offering, and because the moun- 
 tain is rocky, on the mountain itself, i.e. at the foot of the 
 mountain itself, Abraham made an altar: above the altar the 
 mountain rises, and to this mountain men climb by steps: 
 there the Lord was crucified. From the Lord’s Sepulchre 
 to the place of Calvary are paces fifteen in number; it is 
 under one roof. From the place of Calvary? as far as to 
 Golgotha are paces fifteen in number, where the Lord’s 
 Cross wasfound. From Golgotha as far as to holy Sion, 
 which is the mother of all churches, are paces in number 200 : 
 which Sion our Lord Christ together with His apostles founded: 
 it was the house of St. Mark the Evangelist. From holy 
 Sion to the house of Caiaphas, which is now the Church of 
 St. Peter, are more or less paces in number fifty. From the 
 house of Caiaphas to the Praetorium of Pilate are more or less 
 paces in number 100: there is the Church of St. Sophia ; 
 near it St. Jeremiah was sent into the lake [or pit]. The 
 column which was in the house of Caiaphas at which the Lord 
 Christ was scourged is now in holy Sion : by the Lord’s com- 
 mand the column itself followed, and even to-day it appears 
 how while He was being scourged He embraced it : just as in 
 wax, so His arms, His hands or fingers stuck into it, moreover 
 His whole face, His chin, nose or eyes as though He marked 
 them in wax.’ 
 
 Two points in this account may be noticed. First, the 
 writer is aware that the Column of Scourging is now in the 
 Church of Sion. He has knowledge also that it was once in 
 the house of Caiaphas. He solves the problem of its transfer 
 by attributing this to a command of our Lord Himself. 
 Further he describes it as bearing the marks of the Saviour’s 
 face and hands, of which Etheria says nothing, though she 
 too speaks of the column as being at Sion. Was she strangely 
 unobservant or incurious (and one must admit that on a bare 
 
 1 Theodosit De Situ Terrae Sanctae 7 (Itinera Hierosolymitana, 
 ed. Geyer, pp. 140-1). 
 
 2 The scribe or the author writes ‘ de Calvariae locum’. 
 
 3 S. Stlwiae Peregr., xxxvii, § 1 (ed. Geyer, p. 88). 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 49 
 
 consideration of her narrative the inference might be that 
 she had not seen it rather than that she had), or had Theo- 
 dosius himself ever seen it? Is his work a literary tour de 
 force, or was he one of those whom local custodians thought 
 it a pity to disappoint of the sights which he clearly wished 
 to see? The later Middle Ages had a different estimate of 
 archidiaconal ingenuousness ; but we cannot help thinking 
 on the whole that Theodosius had seen a good deal of what he 
 describes, or if not is copying more or less faithfully the work 
 of some one who had. ‘From the house of Pilate,’ he 
 continues, ‘as far as to the Sheep Pool are paces more or less 
 in number 100. There the Lord Christ healed the paralytic, 
 whose bed is there up to this day.’! ‘In the place where the 
 Lord was baptized there is a marble column, and on the column 
 itself is made an iron cross; there too is the church of 
 St. John Baptist which the Emperor Anastasius constructed.’ * 
 “On Mount Olivet the Lord placed His shoulders upon a stone, 
 and in this rock both His shoulders descended as in soft wax.’ 3 
 Or again, if it be not too threadbare an example, he quotes 
 Psalm exiv: ‘O sea wherefore art thou troubled, and thou 
 Jordan wherefore art thou driven backward, and ye mountains 
 wherefore did ye skip like rams and ye hills like the lambs of 
 sheep ?’ And he adds that in the neighbourhood of Jordan 
 are many little mountains and when the Lord descended to 
 baptism the mountains themselves ambled before Him dancing, 
 ‘and to-day they have the appearance of leaping.’ * That 
 is, of course, Imagination, butis it the imagination of the study ? 
 On the other hand there are not a few passages which look like 
 notes from a commonplace book filled with scraps of more 
 or less inaccurate geographical information collected from 
 many sources, and the work as we have it may be a combina- 
 tion of observation and reading. In sucha collection a person 
 making notes might well record just barely : ‘ In the province 
 Cilicia, the city Tarsus, thence was Apollonius,’® as an 
 interesting fact, whereas in a note of an actual visit a 
 man of Theodosius’ turn of mind would never have omitted all 
 
 1 Theodos., op. cit., viii (ed. Geyer, p. 142). 
 2 Ibid., xx (ed. Geyer, p. 145). 
 8 Ibid., xxi (ed. Geyer, p. 146). 
 4 Ps. cxlii (cxiv), 5-6. Ibid., 22 (ed. Geyer, pp. 146- 7): 
 ei bid.). 32) (ed. Geyer, np. 150). 
 E 
 
50 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 reference to the most illustrious representative of no mean 
 city. And the modern editor’s suggestion that in Apollonius 
 or ‘ Apollius’ we are to find a corruption of ‘apostolus Paulus’ 
 is perhaps best regarded as one of those emendations which 
 we all of us make sometimes, but which we do our best to 
 forget. 
 
 Let us return now to the little book by an unknown author 
 which is called the ‘ Breviarius’, i.e. ‘ Short Description of 
 Jerusalem’. It is very short, barely 62 lines in all, and the 
 date usually assigned to it is about the same as that of Theo- 
 dosius, 527-30. It was pointed out by Dr. Bernard when he 
 edited Theodosius for the ‘ Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society ’ 
 that the latter does not mention Justinian’s building at 
 Jerusalem and that he was clearly used by Gregory of Tours.+ 
 We cannot therefore date Theodosius much later than 530 ; 
 but this ‘Short Description’ may be a good deal earlier, 
 possibly as early as 500 or even a little before. It would be 
 tempting to give it in full, for it is fascinating to read. In 
 his book The Dawn of Modern Geography, which has laid 
 all students, whether they are always able to accept its 
 conclusions or not, under a heavy debt of obligation, Professor 
 Beazley summarizes one aspect of it by saying?: ‘Short as 
 is the account, it is packed full of news for the relic seeker. 
 He is told of the “* holy lance, made of the wood of the Cross, 
 which shines at night like the sun in the glory of the day ”’ ; 
 of the “* horn with which David and Solomon were anointed ”’ ; 
 of the “‘ring of amber with which Solomon sealed his books”? ; 
 of the ‘‘ earth of which Adam was formed ”’; of the ‘‘ reed and 
 sponge, and the cup of the Last Supper ”’ ; of “* the stone with 
 which Stephen was stoned’’; of the crown of thorns, the 
 identical “‘lamp”’ of the upper chamber, and the “rod of 
 scourging enclosed in a silver column’’.’? We will venture to 
 add one passage: ‘ Thence you go to ‘ie house of Caiaphas 
 where St. Peter made his denial: where there is a great 
 basilica of St. Peter. Thence you go to the house of Pilate 
 where he handed over the Lord to the Jews to be scourged : 
 where there is a great basilica and there is there a chamber 
 
 1 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text ee Theodosius, translated by 
 J. H. Bernard (London, 1893), p. 5 
 
 > C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography (London: John 
 Murray, 1897), i, p. 98. 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 51 
 
 (cubiculus) where they stripped Him and He was scourged, and 
 it is called St. Sophia.’! This is in Sir Charles Wilson’s view the 
 earliest reference to that church.? 
 
 It will be impossible not to have been struck by the increase 
 in the number of relics associated with our Lord which this 
 ‘Short Description’ mentions. Two at least which are 
 included as being then at Jerusalem became later, as we know, 
 the subject of other stories in other places—the Lance and the 
 Holy Grail. But the writer does not mention the earth out 
 of which Adam was formed as being preserved as a relic: 
 he identifies the place of Adam’s creation, the place of the 
 offering of Isaac, and the place of the Crucifixion as one and 
 the same place—which is a very different thing.? One further 
 point may be noted with a hope that even if the discussion 
 may seem rather technical the result may not be uninteresting ; 
 it relates to the ‘ring of amber with which Solomon sealed 
 his books’. It will be remembered that the horn of anointing 
 and Solomon’s ring are both mentioned by Etheria 4 ; but the 
 ‘ Breviarius’ contains two very remarkable passages on 
 the subject of the ring. We will take the second first. 
 *“* There,”? says the unknown writer, ‘is that horn wherewith 
 David was anointed and Solomon, and that ring is there 
 wherewith Solomon sealed ’—what? ‘ His books,’ says 
 Professor Beazley ; ‘ his writings,’ according to Sir Charles 
 Wilson. ‘And it is of amber.’ Now there are two MSS. of 
 this little work, one at St. Gall, dated in 811; the other in the 
 Ambrosian Library at Milan and belonging, apparently, 
 though Geyer gives three different datings to it in different 
 parts of his edition of the Itinera Hierosolymitana, to the 
 twelfth century. The older MS., which is also the shorter, 
 omits all reference to Solomon’s ring: according to accepted 
 custom we should therefore prefer it, unless some special 
 reason can be shown for the omission. We look at the other 
 MS.: what it says is not ‘ books’ or ‘ writings ’—sermones— 
 but ‘demones’, demons, ‘the ring with which Solomon sealed 
 
 1 Breviarius de Hierosolyma (in Itinera WHierosol., ed. Geyer, 
 Pp. 155). 
 
 2 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition (London, 1890), p. v. 
 
 8 Still less does the writer say that the Lance was ‘ made of the 
 wood of the Cross ’, but ‘de ipsa facta est crux ’. 
 
 4 Supra, p. 47. 
 
52 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 demons.’ The emendation is ingenious, but does not explain 
 the corruption. We turn now to the first passage to which 
 reference has briefly been made. The writer is describing 
 the apse of Constantine’s basilica (we take the translation 
 accepted by Sir Charles Wilson): ‘The apse itself [has] 
 twelve marble columns round about it, and [what is] altogether 
 incredible [there are] twelve urns of silver on the top of these 
 columns.’ A reference to Eusebius’ Life of Constantine,} 
 shows that the columns with their great silver jars on the top are 
 mentioned with special attention as the Emperor’s gift, and 
 we ask ourselves why in the world they should be described 
 as ‘ altogether incredible ’, for we see nothing strange about 
 them. But when we look at the manuscript authority 
 for the passage in the ‘ Breviarius’ we do find something 
 strange. The older, and shorter, MS. has omitted the whole 
 passage and other words as well, apparently by homoesarcton, 
 i.e. because the next sentence begins with the same word 
 and the scribe’s eye skipped from the one to the other, as 
 as has happened to most of us. But the later MS. reads: 
 ‘in the circuit [i.e. of the apse] are twelve marble columns, a 
 thing altogether incredible, upon the columns themselves 
 twelve water-pots, where Solomon sealed demons’. One 
 secret at any rate is out. ‘Omnino incredibile ’—a thing 
 altogether incredible—is the startled or scandalized observa- 
 tion of a reader of a MS. older than the Ambrosian, added 
 when he came upon what looked like the introduction of an 
 incident which to us suggests the Arabian Nights. In the 
 Ambrosian MS. it has crept into the text itself. On the 
 whole we venture to think that the genii or jinn may be 
 retained. 
 
 We pass now to the Itinerary associated with the name 
 of Antoninus of Placentia. Tradition has made hima martyr, 
 and criticism has sometimes regarded him asaliar. Professor 
 Beazley, who accepts the ordinary dating for his travels 
 if genuine as A.D. 570, describes his work as sharing ‘ with 
 Silvia’s [i.e. Etheria’s] peregrination the credit of being 
 the most extensive, curious, and suggestive of all the pilgrim- 
 records before the rise of Islam’.2. He adds, however, that 
 
 1 Eusebius. Vita Constantini, iii, 38. 
 2 Dawn of Modern Geography, i, 109. 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 53 
 
 ‘in it we find the superstition and muddleheadedness of its 
 class developed more fully than in any previous example’. 
 It may be suggested that this is not a very profitable method 
 of treating an author if we are trying to understand him or 
 the age in which he lived. The Itinerary exists in two recen- 
 sions and is not by Antoninus but by one of his companions. 
 If in what follows some things are stated without comment, 
 it must not be inferred that we accept the genuineness of all 
 that the narrator says that he saw, but merely that in our 
 opinion he is probably truthful in stating that he saw these 
 things and that he is honest even if he makes mistakes. It 
 must be remembered that there is at least some evidence 
 that in the second half of the sixth century there had developed 
 in the West considerable interest in relics, and in this as 
 in other directions it must be confessed that demand has been 
 known to create the supply. 
 
 The motive of the journey is stated to be the following 
 of the footsteps (vestigia) of Christ and beholding the scenes 
 of the miracles of the holy prophets. As has been pointed 
 out by Sir Charles Wilson and many others, the pilgrimage 
 ‘is remarkable for the extent of ground which it covers— 
 Palestine, Sinai, Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia’. It is 
 hard to resist the temptation to discuss point by point the 
 details of the journey and the writer’s criticisms upon the 
 characteristics of the cities and other places which he visited. 
 We can, however, only call attention to the kind of things 
 which the traveller saw, we may add, if we like, which he hoped 
 to see. Thus at Sarepta he sees the chamber of Elijah and 
 his couch and the kneading-trough in which the widow of 
 Sarepta mixed her dough. In this place, he adds, many 
 offerings are made and many works of power (virtutes) will 
 be done there. Sarepta, he tells us, is a town of moderate 
 size, but very Christian (Christiana nimis).2 After visiting 
 the monastery of Elisha he venerates at Diocesarea the pail 
 
 “and basket of the Blessed Virgin : he is shown also the chair 
 
 (cathedra) in which she was sitting at the time of the Visitation. 
 The other recension calls the place Neocesarea: it is the 
 modern Seffurieh where, according to Sir Charles Wilson, 
 
 PAD. Dz. TIO, 
 2 Antonini Placentinit Itinerarium (in Itinera Hierosol., ed. Geyer, 
 Ppp. 160-61). 
 
54 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 the birthplace of the Virgin is still shown.1 The party 
 proceeds to Cana, where they visit the scene of the Marriage- 
 feast. The narrator tells us that he reclined on the seat, i.e. 
 the seat on which our Lord reclined, ‘ and there I unworthy 
 wrote the names of my parents’ 2: some modern tourists, 
 one may fear, would have written their own. In what follows 
 the two recensions present a curious variation which illustrates 
 very well what may often have happened in course of trans- 
 mission. The one says: ‘Of these water-pots there are two 
 there, and I filled one of them with wine and lifted it fullon my 
 shoulder and offered it at the altar.’ So stated, the incident 
 has at least verisimilitude; but forthe other recension it is too | 
 commonplace. It says: ‘Of these water-pots there are 
 two there, I filled one of them with water and I brought 
 forth from it wine, and I lifted it full on my arm and offered 
 it at the altar.’ ? The story has been spoilt, but the redactor 
 has not understood why. At the fountain, presumably that 
 from which the water came, the pilgrims bathed ‘ pro 
 benedictione ’—for a blessing—a motive which determines 
 a good many of their actions. 
 
 At Nazareth the pilgrims see ‘in the synagogue’ the 
 volume out of which our Lord learnt His A B C and the bench 
 on which He sat with the other children—a bench which 
 Christians can shake and lift but Jews cannot move, and which 
 does not let itself be taken out of doors. The house of the 
 Virgin has become a basilica where many benefits are derived 
 from her garments ; and the beauty of the women of the place 
 is attributed to her intervention. At Mount Tabor the 
 pilgrims find three basilicas where ‘the disciple said 
 ‘* Let us make three tabernacles’’.’? It is at any rate more 
 reasonable than a list of relics belonging to a much later 
 period which purported to include some of the wood out of 
 which St. Peter had proposed to make them. But here the 
 reader will observe a very curious thing: all the MSS. say 
 simply ‘the disciple’, except one which says ‘ Peter’. 
 Nothing, we say to ourselves, is more natural: some scribe 
 has given an identification and has put it into the text ; the 
 vaguer reading is clearly to be preferred ;no one with‘ Peter ’ 
 in the text before him would substitute the vaguer term 
 
 + Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition (London, 1896), p. 4. 
 
 2 Itin., 4 (ed. Geyer, p. 161). 
 * Cf. Geyer, op. cit., pp. 161, 196. 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 55 
 
 ‘the disciple’. Clearly! But we may observe with a mixture 
 of malicious enjoyment and a note of self-warning that the 
 MS. which has the name ‘ Peter’ is a good deal older than 
 the others whose reading we are commending; and we 
 remember what we are always in danger of forgetting, that a 
 later MS. sometimes preserves an earlier reading. 
 
 It is interesting to notice that the narrator does not vouch 
 for everything that is shown him. Im a passage where he 
 makes a bad slip in confusing Samaria and Shechem he 
 mentions what is said to be the vessel out of which our Lord 
 drank at the well!. We smile when we find him mentioning 
 the two fountains Jor and Dan, the streams of which united to 
 form the River Jordan ; but it is wise to remember that even 
 so great a scholar as St. Jerome does not disdain to mention 
 the etymology, without however accepting it.” 
 
 The tendency which we noticed in Theodosius, and which 
 occurs in many other writers, to collect associations round 
 a single spot, e.g. Calvary, is seen in this Itinerary in regard 
 to the place of our Lord’s Baptism. Here, says the writer, 
 was the scene of the passage of the Israelites, here the sons 
 of the prophets lost the axe, here Elijah was taken up to 
 heaven.? And here we in our turn pause to ask ourselves 
 the question To what extent did the language of Scripture 
 or an attempt to interpret it tend to create stories? The 
 question is, as we know, of considerable interest in connexion 
 with St. Matthew’s Gospel, but it has a far wider bearing. 
 At the risk of seeming obscurantist or worse we are bound to 
 say that we can find singularly few cases in which such an 
 explanation seems to have reasonable probability. An 
 example may be taken in regard to which judgment 
 is not likely to be affected by ulterior considerations. 
 Kucherius in the fifth century quotes apparently from 
 Josephus a statement that the city of Jerusalem in the midst 
 of Judaea was regarded by the learned as the navel of the 
 whole region. We know that in later writers, as in some 
 
 1 Itin. 6 (ed. Geyer, p. 162). 
 
 2 Ibid., 7 (ed. Geyer, p. 163). Cf. S. Hieronymi Comm. in Matt. xvi, 13. 
 
 3 Itin. 9 (ed. Geyer, p. 165). 
 
 4 Eucherit quae fertuy De Situ Hierusolimitanae urbis atque 
 ipsius Iudaeae Epistola ad Faustum Presbyterum (in Itinera Hierosol., 
 ed. Geyer, p. 134), ‘ quasi umbilicus regionis totius, ut prudentibus 
 placuit, nuncupatur.’ The passage is not contained in the Palestine 
 Pilgrims’ Text Society edition. 
 
56 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 earlier ones, Jerusalem and in Jerusalem Golgotha was 
 regarded as the navel of the world. ‘Two texts of Ezekiel,’ 
 says Professor Beazley, ‘ and two of the Psalms were supposed 
 to prove that Jerusalem, where God had ‘“‘ worked salvation 
 in the midst of the earth’? was this central point. ‘‘ For 
 thus saith the Lord, This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the 
 midst of the nations and countries that are round about.’’’+ 
 We are familiar with the consequences which the idea had 
 in the drawing of primitive maps; but even here, it may be 
 thought, Scripture was cited to confirm an opinion which 
 originated from other considerations but which it did not 
 create. In any case it is absolutely certain that the passages 
 quoted were not regarded as of coercive, nor even as of con- 
 clusive, authority by every one. 
 
 We return now to the Itinerary of Antoninus at the point 
 from which we digressed, and in doing so we observe the 
 elaborate system of guest-houses or hospices, Xenodochia, for 
 pilgrims and for those suffering from leprosy and other diseases, 
 of which it affords evidence. Before the Persian and the Arab 
 conquests Palestine must have contained a very large number 
 of these ‘inns’, situated at natural halting places for travellers 
 or at places to which by reason of their associations large 
 bodies of people would be likely to congregate. In those at 
 Jerusalem which are mentioned in the Itinerary the food 
 was cooked, we are told, with dew from Hermon which 
 descended there, and the statement is regarded as confirmed 
 by the words of the Psalmist, ‘ Like as the dew from Hermon 
 which descended on Mount Sion.’ 2? What the words were 
 regarded as supporting was the view that the dew which 
 descended there and with which the food was cooked was 
 dew from Hermon and not from elsewhere, and the narrator 
 tells us that it was collected by doctors (medici) and was good 
 for the healing of diseases. 
 
 The Itinerary is a perplexing work, for as we read it our 
 opinion changes almost from page to page. The writer tells 
 us that Scythopolis is on a mountain,’ which is certainly not 
 the case, and that nothing floats in the Dead Sea nor can a 
 man swim in it 4—a statement which is far more startling 
 
 1 Dawn of Modern Geography, i, p. 338. 
 2 Ps. xxxii (xxxiii), 3. tin. 9 (ed. Geyer, p. 165). 
 
 5 Ibid., 8 (ed. Geyer, p. 164). 
 * Ibid., 10 (ed. Geyer, p. 166). 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 57 
 
 and has given rise to injurious reflexions on his veracity 
 or the genuineness of his work as a record of observation. 
 It is not, however, clear that the inference drawn from the 
 blunder need be more unfavourable than that from the 
 famous story of the problem of the fish which Charles II 
 is said to have propounded to the Royal Society; though 
 we may be safe in conjecturing that the writer had not made 
 the necessary experiment. On the other hand the account 
 of the obelisk and the wooden cross at Jordan, where the 
 writer claims to have spent Epiphany, seems to represent 
 something that he had seen !; and we may count it as a point 
 to his credit that when he gets to Jericho, which he compares, 
 like Galilee, to Paradise, he does not claim to have been shown 
 then or later the two pence mentioned in the story of the 
 Good Samaritan, to whom indeed he does not refer. But 
 what are we to make of the story of the ‘ Ager Domini ’— 
 the Lord’s Field?? He did not originate it. Even in the 
 period with which we are dealing it is found in the narrative 
 of Theodosius, who says that ‘the Field of the Lord in 
 Galgala is watered from the Fountain of Elisha ; it produces 
 six bushels more or less. In the month of August half of 
 the field is ploughed, and there is a crop at Easter from 
 which the oblation is taken for Holy Thursday and Easter 
 Day. And when that is cut, the other half is ploughed 
 and there is a second crop. ‘There too is the vine which the 
 Lord planted, which vine bears fruit at Pentecost ; from this 
 the oblation [i.e. of wine] is taken. And so from the field 
 as from the vine the produce is transmitted at the proper 
 season to Constantinople.’? At the beginning of his treatise 
 Theodosius tells us what the Lord’s Field is: ‘ there,’ he says, 
 ‘the Lord Jesus Christ ploughed one furrow with His own hand.’ 
 To this, according to Dr. Bernard, one MS. adds: ‘ and sowed 
 it. And there is a monastery, and in the monastery 300 
 monks, who own the field ; and the field yields a crop every 
 third year, and every crop yields eight bushels.’ ° It is 
 clear that we have evidence of two different traditions, for 
 
 Itim,, 11. (ed. Geyer, p. 166). 
 
 Ibid., 13 (ed. Geyer, p. 168). 
 
 Theodos., op. cit., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 145). 
 Ibid., x (ed. Geyer, p. 137). 
 
 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition, p. 7. 
 
 a FF © wD 
 
58 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 the reading is not one whichcan be dismissed as mere invention. 
 Let us turn to the Itinerary. We learn there that before the 
 basilica not far from Jordan, which contains the stones taken 
 up from Jordan by the children of Israel, is a ‘campus’, the 
 ‘ Ager Domini’, in which ‘ the Lord sowed with His own hand, 
 bearing seed up to three bushels : moreover it is reaped twice 
 in the year ; it is never sown, but grows of itself. Further, 
 it is gathered in February, and therefrom Communion is 
 made at Easter. When it has been reaped it is ploughed 
 and again reaped along with other harvests : it is subsequently 
 ploughed again and left alone’.t. The story is consistent 
 enough to suggest the knowledge of a real field to which 
 these stories attached, inconsistent enough to suggest doubts 
 as to the original form of the story, but not as to the fact 
 that there was a story. 
 
 We pass by the mention of the tomb of Absalom ? which 
 is a new feature here first introduced, of the tree into which 
 Zaccheeus climbed, and of the fig-tree on which Judas hanged 
 himself. In Gethsemane is a basilica which, the narrator 
 tells us, they say was the house of the Blessed Virgin and 
 the place where she was taken (sublata) from the body.? 
 Of the appearance of the Holy Sepulchre there is a most 
 striking account. The rock of the Tomb has by this time 
 been so much adorned with gold and precious stones that 
 its colour cannot be distinguished. ‘ From iron rods hang 
 armlets, bracelets, necklaces, rings, coronets, waist-bands, 
 sword-belts, crowns of emperors made of gold or precious 
 stones, and a great number of ornaments given by empresses.’ 
 ‘The Tomb itself,’ the writer adds, ‘is like the winning- 
 post of a course, covered with silver.’4 This again may be 
 regarded as a comparison suggested by personal observation. 
 In the account of the Veneration of the Cross at Golgotha 
 there is another note which suggests genuineness. The 
 narrator says that he adored it and kissed it,> but not that he 
 handled it: that, if the earlier description which we have 
 mentioned represents a real custom, would not have been 
 
 1 Itin., 13 (ed. Geyer, pp. 168-9). 
 * Ibid., ro (ed. Geyer, p. 166). 
 
 8 Itin., 17 (ed. Geyer, p. 170). 
 
 4 Ibid., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 171, cf. 203-4). 
 
 > “adorauimus et osculauimus,’ ibid., 20 (ed. Geyer, p. 172). 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 59 
 
 allowed. But if he did not do so, this may account for the 
 difficulty caused by his statement that the Cross was of 
 nut-wood, in regard to which Sir Charles Wilson notes that there 
 are no hazel-trees near Jerusalem and that the modern tradition 
 is that the Cross was of olive-wood, though it may have been 
 of oak. The titulus or superscription, which the narrator 
 gives in the form ‘ Hic est rex Judaeorum ’, he says that he 
 not only kissed but held in his hand. The story is, however, 
 embellished, though not improved, by an account of the star 
 which comes and stands over the place of the Cross when it 
 is brought out of its receptacle and of the effect upon flasks 
 of oil which are brought that the Cross may touch them and 
 which boil over in consequence. The relics which the writer 
 mentions are the sponge, from which he says that he drank 
 water, the reed and the Holy Grail which was made, it would 
 seem, of onyx, a painting of the Blessed Virgin, her girdle 
 and her head band. 
 
 In the Basilica of Sion, which was the house of St. James, 
 he sees the ‘ lapis angularis’’ or corner-stone and the Column 
 of the Flagellation. The latter shows the mark of our Lord’s 
 breast, of His two hands, the palms, and the fingers. These 
 are measured and the measurements taken as a remedy for 
 various sicknesses,? a custom which was certainly common 
 in other connexions elsewhere in the later Middle Ages. It 
 will be noticed that the writer says nothing of the appearance 
 of the Face, of which we have found mention earlier. There 
 is seen also the ‘ horn with which kings were anointed and 
 David’, but nothing is said of Solomon’s ring. Mention 
 is made of the crown of thorns, the lance, the stones (not, as 
 before, the stone) with which St. Stephen was stoned, a 
 little column on which was set the cross of St. Peter on which 
 he was crucified at Rome—which is in the circumstances a 
 strange relic to find here—the chalice used by the Apostles 
 at masses (missae) after the Resurrection and, the writer adds, 
 ‘many other marvels (miracula) which I do not recollect.’ 3 
 It seems hard that the frankness of this last remark should 
 have been used as an argument against his narrative. 
 
 1 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society edition, p. 17. 
 
 2 “Ita ut pro singulis languoribus mensura tollatur exinde,’ Itin. 22 
 (ed. Geyer, p. 174). 
 
 s “Et multa alia miracula, quae non recolo,’ ibid. 
 
60 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Perhaps the most startling thing in the Itinerary is the 
 mention a little later of a picture of our Lord in the Judgment 
 Hall of Pilate, a picture which is said to have been painted 
 from life. That such a picture, however, whatever its date, 
 may have been there it is impossible to deny. The description 
 given is of a person of ordinary height, a handsome face, 
 hair inclined to curl, a beautiful hand with long fingers, a 
 beautiful small delicate foot.1 The absence of a beard is 
 noteworthy for reasons which will at once suggest themselves 
 to students of iconography ; but the whole description is of 
 importance, for if it is genuine it antedates by nearly two 
 centuries what Mr. G. F. Hill describes ? as the earliest literary 
 representation of our Lord, that of John of Damascus, who 
 died about 754. 
 
 It must be remembered in our judgment of such a writer 
 as that of the Itinerary that we are dealing with a man 
 who goes for example to a place where it was said that Samson 
 slew 1,000 men with a jawbone of an ass: from that jawbone 
 sprang forth a fountain which continues to this day: he has 
 seen it. He goes on to the place ‘ where Isaiah was sawn 
 asunder or is buried’: the saw is preserved: he has seen it.* 
 It is safer to assume that such a man has really seen the 
 things that he says he has seen, whatever we may think of 
 his credulity. But if so we can accept his evidence when he 
 tells us of accommodation provided in hospices in his day for 
 as many as 3,000 pilgrims at a time, though of course he may 
 have been no better judge of large numbers than a modern 
 speaker who believed himself to have addressed 6,000 people 
 in a building of which the utmost capacity is 1,650. And with 
 this we must leave him: it is not to his dispraise that we leave 
 him with regret. 
 
 When we come to Bishop Arculf, almost exactly a century 
 later (A.D. c. 670) we find ourselves confronted with a narrative 
 not written nor purporting to be written by himself but by a 
 man more famous—Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columba. 
 Arculf’s see is unknown, but Adamnan tells us that he was 
 
 1 Itin., 23 (ed. Geyer, p. 175). 
 Gur Hill, The Medallic Portraits of Christ (Clarendon Press, 1920), 
 
 . 9. 
 ® Itin., 32 (ed. Geyer, p. 179). 
 4 Ibid. (ed. Geyer, p. 180). 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 61 
 
 of Gallic race, that he spent nine months in Jerusalem, and 
 that he gave the account of what he had seen in response to 
 a request, Adamnan acting as scribe.1. The narrative which 
 we have is divided into three books and covers a wide area, 
 for Arculf would seem to have visited not only Jerusalem 
 and the whole of Palestine but Damascus, ‘Tyre, 
 Constantinople, and Alexandria—a city so large that it takes 
 a whole October day to traverse it—as well as the Nile Valley. 
 About all these scenes he has many interesting details to relate 
 as well as of the volcanoes of Lipari and other marvels. 
 Adamnan describes him as ‘ uerax index’, a truthful guide, 
 and, though there may not have been at Iona where the work 
 was compiled great facilities for checking his statements, there 
 is evidence that there were at any rate some, and there can be 
 no doubt of the deepness of the impression which Arculf himself 
 made upon Adamnan. For the later student the impression is 
 enhanced as he looks at the plans of the Churches of the Holy 
 Sepulchre and of Sion, of the Church of the Ascension on the 
 Mount of Olives and of Jacob’s Well which Arculf drew for 
 his host with his own hand on a wax tablet and which 
 Adamnan reproduced in his manuscript. To the account of 
 Jerusalem an additional importance is given by the fact 
 that it is later than the attacks of the Persians and the Arabs. 
 If in the narrative itself there are things that make us wonder, 
 we must remember, as before, that the narrator is not therefore 
 necessarily either dishonest or ridiculous. When, for example, 
 he says that the noise of a volcano is louder on Fridays and 
 Saturdays than on other days,? we shall infer, should we 
 hesitate to accept the statement, not that he had never seen 
 the voleano but that like many in a later age he had made a 
 generalization based on the observation of insufficient 
 instances. Probably everyone will concede so much, but 
 it is fair to apply the same argument to the account of the 
 yearly purification of the streets of Jerusalem on the night 
 of September 15th by the fall of an abundance of rain from the 
 clouds. This is not mere trifling, for the credit attaching 
 
 1 Adamnani De Locis Sanctis, i, Praef. (in Itinera Hierosolym., 
 ed) Gever: 1p." 227); 
 
 2 Reproduced in Geyer’s edition, Jtin. Hierosolym., pp. 231, 250, 271. 
 
 3 ‘Maius sexta feria et sabbato intonare uidetur’, Adamnani 
 
 De Locis Sanctis, iii, 6 (ed. Geyer, p. 296). 
 4 Ibid., i, r (ed. Geyer, p. 225). 
 
62 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 to the author’s veracity, if not always to his judgment, 
 is of the highest importance, since he gives detailed descrip- 
 tions, e.g. as to the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
 based, as Adamnan states, on actual measurements. ‘Thus 
 he gives the length of the Sepulchre as seven feet : and he also 
 corrects what he designates as false opinions, e.g. that the 
 Sepulchre is not like a bed of rock but has a projection 
 dividing the slab in two.1 
 
 As we have seen, Arculf’s visit to Jerusalem was made 
 subsequently to the conquests of 614 and 637. The Church 
 of the Holy Sepulchre that he saw can therefore be only a 
 restoration of Constantine’s Church. There are real difficulties 
 in the account which he gives, notably as to the three walls,? 
 and there are discrepancies with the other stories, though 
 some of them are not inexplicable in view of the course 
 of events. At the time of the visit of Antoninus and _ his 
 companions the stone which had closed the Sepulchre was, 
 if the narrative be genuine, and we see no special reason to 
 doubt it, in front of the entrance?: now, it is represented 
 as having been cut in two and made into two altars.* In 
 Antoninus’ time the Sepulchre was covered with silver®; in 
 Arculf’s it was covered with choice marble ®; at the present 
 day it is also lined with marble. When Arculf saw it—if 
 we may trust his statement, as it seems reasonable to do— 
 the Sepulchre was entirely unadorned within: the natural 
 rock of two colours, red and white, was visible and still bore 
 the marks of tools,?7 whereas, in spite of the arguments of 
 Mr. H. T. F. Duckworth to the contrary, we find it hard to 
 believe from the description of it in the time of Antoninus 
 that any part of it was then visible, though the passages to 
 which Mr. Duckworth calls attention are difficult to explain if 
 such a view be taken.§ Our safest inference would seem to 
 
 1 Adamn., i, 2 (ed. Geyer, p. 229). 
 
 * Ibid. (ed. Geyer, p. 227), cf. Duckworth, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
 pp. 101-3 
 
 § «Ante os monumenti,’ Jtin., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 171). 
 
 4 Adamnani De Locis Sanctis, i, 3 (ed. Geyer, p. 232). 
 
 > ‘Ipsum monumentum sic quasi in modum metae coopertus ex 
 argento sub solas aureos,’ Itin., 18 (ed. Geyer, p. 171). 
 
 ® ‘Totum extrinsecus electo tegitur marmore,’ Adamn., op. cit., i, 2 
 (ed. Geyer, p. 228). 
 
 7 Ibid., i, 3 (ed. Geyer, p. 232). 
 
 ® Church of the Holy Sepulchre, p. 112. 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 63 
 
 be that in Arculf’s time the Sepulchre had not regained in the 
 course of the restoration by Bishop Modestus all its former, 
 perhaps rather garish, magnificence. 
 
 The place where the True Cross had stood is spoken of 
 by Arculf as occupied by a great cross of silver. Among the 
 relics which he saw was the Holy Grail, a cup of saver with 
 two small handles, one on either side, and holding the measure 
 of a Gallic sextiary i.e. a quart. It contained the sponge 
 that was put to our Lord’s lips and it is stated to be the same 
 chalice that our Lord used with His disciples after the 
 Resurrection. The cup was contained in a perforated case 
 through which Arculf both touched and kissed it.t There, 
 too, are the soldier’s spear—the lance—and the sacred 
 napkin placed on our Lord’s Head in the Sepulchre: this 
 ‘sudarium ’, of about eight feet long, is a new feature, and a 
 story is told of its history for which the testimony of the whole 
 people of Jerusalem is alleged.? Associated with it is a 
 story of another linen cloth seen by Arculf. This was the 
 work, as it is said (ut fertur), of the Blessed Virgin herself, 
 and had inworked in it the image of our Lord and small 
 representations of the twelve Apostles. It seems from the 
 description to have been red on one side and green on the other, 
 and it will be noticed that, while Arculf vouches for the fact 
 that it is to be seen there, he does not commit himself to the 
 story of its origin.® 
 
 We come now to a feature of which the interpretation 
 is certainly wrong—the column in the midst of the city which 
 is said to prove that Jerusalem is situated in the middle of 
 the earth. What will strike the reader, we think, with 
 regard to it is the evidence that is adduced in support of this 
 view. ‘That evidence is the physical fact that at the summer 
 solstice it casts no shadow: it is not merely the occurrence 
 in Psalm Ixxii (Ixxiv), 12, of the words: ‘God our king 
 before the ages has wrought salvation in the midst of the 
 earth.’ Itis true that Arculf, or Adamnan, quotes that text ; 
 but it is the confirmation of a fact which is deemed to be 
 proved by the results of observation, however interpreted. 
 
 1 Adamn., op. cit., i, 7 (ed. Geyer, pp. 234-5). 
 
 2 Ibid., 1, 9 (ed. Geyer, pp. 235-8). 
 
 3 Ibid., i, 10 (ed. Geyer, p. 239). 
 
 4*‘Quae mediterranea et umbilicus terrae dicitur,’ Adamn., 
 op. cit., i, 11 (ed. Geyer, pp. 239-40). 
 
64 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 As in the account of the peregrination of Antoninus and 
 his companions the tomb of the Virgin is mentioned, and 
 mentioned as being empty—the body has been taken away 
 (sublata). Arculf adds that the manner, the time, and the 
 agents of its removal or in what place it awaits the Resurrec- 
 tion, no one, as it is said (ut fertur), can know for certain. 
 In the Itinerary of Antoninus again mention is made of the 
 three ‘ resting-places ’ (accubita) of our Lord at Gethsemane? : 
 Arculf is shown the stone upon which our Lord knelt there to 
 pray ; it was impressed with the marks of His knees as in very 
 soft wax,* just as later in the round Church of the Ascension 
 Arculf sees the marks of our Lord’s feet, marks which refuse 
 to let themselves be covered with marble, and although the 
 faithful carry the earth away, i.e. as relics, the imprint still 
 remains.* Arculf does not give this as tradition but as fact, 
 and in relation to the Church of the Ascension itself he tells 
 Adamnan that it is open to the sky because on Ascension 
 Day at the hour of the Lord’s Ascension there comes a wind 
 there strong enough to carry away one covering: he has 
 himself experienced its force.® 
 
 It will be obvious to anyone who knows the stories at first hand 
 that we have been dealing only with quite a limited selection, 
 and even that has had to be confined in the main to Jerusalem. 
 Anyone who is tempted to pursue the subject further, as it 
 deserves, will find most interesting food for reflexion in the 
 successive stages of the story of Bethlehem as it appears 
 in the several narratives, and also of the places specially 
 connected with the lives of the patriarchs. Arculf saw the 
 tombs of the four Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and 
 Adam, buried with their feet towards the south, and the 
 inferior memorials, ‘ uiliores et minores’ of three women &— 
 a curiously Eastern touch, for the women are Sarah, Rebecca 
 and Leah. Poor Mother Eve receives no mention, and 
 Rachael, of course, is buried elsewhere with the ‘ titulus ’ 
 which her husband placed over her still to be seen.?. Arculf’s 
 
 Adamn., i, 12 (ed. Geyer, p. 240). 
 
 Itin., 17 (ed. Geyer, p. 170). 
 
 Adamn., op. cit., i, 12 (ed. Geyer, pp. 240-1). 
 Ibid., i, 23 (ed. Geyer, pp. 246-7). 
 
 Ibid. (ed. Geyer, p. 249). 
 
 Ibid., ii, 10 (ed. Geyer, pp. 260-1). 
 
 Ibid., ii, 7 (ed. Geyer, pp. 258-9). 
 
 sy oQ ape © wD 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 65 
 
 account of the ‘oak’ of Mamre, under which Abraham 
 received his angelic visitors, is really notable. He is talking 
 about something which Adamnan, who in this as in several 
 other instances shows himself an intelligent student of 
 St. Jerome, regards as of considerable importance and about 
 which he asks the Bishop numerous questions. Neither of 
 them pledges himself to the statement that it is as old as the 
 world, a statement which is quoted; but Adamnan ascertains 
 by his questions what Arculf actually saw, the size of what 
 remains of it, and the fact—in itself probable enough—that 
 chips of it were carried away as relics. It is true that, as 
 has been pointed out, the Jewish and Christian traditions 
 differed as to the situation of the tree,? and there is the same 
 kind of difference of opinion as there is as to the site of 
 Augustine’s Oak ; but so far as Arculf’s narrative is concerned 
 our opinion of its value is enhanced rather than diminished 
 by the character of the account that he gives here, as in 
 other scenes which he describes. 
 
 The reader will perhaps have noticed that in his account 
 of what he saw at Jerusalem Arculf is not represented as 
 stating that he saw the True Cross. The reason of this is 
 equally plain. Rightly or wrongly Arculf, if we accept 
 his account as genuine, firmly believed that in his own 
 time it was preserved at Constantinople and that he had 
 himself seen it there: at least that seems to be a legitimate 
 inference from Adamnan’s narrative. It is said to be 
 preserved in a magnificent round church there. In the church 
 is an exceedingly large and very beautiful aumbry (armarium) 
 which encloses a wooden box (capsa) which has a wooden 
 cover. This shrine is exposed once a year for three days 
 continuously, beginning on Maundy Thursday, on a golden 
 altar two cubits long and one broad, and is then venerated 
 on each day by a different class of persons, beginning with 
 the Emperor. It is noted that there are not two but three 
 short pieces of wood in the Cross, and that when the box is 
 opened there is omitted a wonderful fragrance, as though all the 
 flowers had been collected in it. The cause of this odour 
 
 1 Adamn., op. cit., ii, 11 (ed. Geyer, pp. 261-2). 
 
 4 The Pilgrimage of Arculfus, translated and annotated by J. R. 
 Macpherson, ‘ Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society’ (London, 1895), 
 PP- 33-4- 
 
 F 
 
66 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 is a liquid that distils from the pieces of wood, one drop of 
 which recovers the sick no matter what the disease from 
 which they are suffering.1 And here we must take leave 
 of Arculf, however unwillingly, with the parting note that 
 in the account of St. George, which follows, has been seen 
 the first story of the English patron saint which can be 
 regarded as having obtained circulation in England. 
 
 The eighth century yields much less than its predecessors 
 to the student of narratives of pilgrim adventure. It was 
 inevitable that this should be so, for with the advance of 
 Moslem conquest the incentives no less than the facilities 
 for Eastern travel were diminished. And though the modern 
 historian looking back may feel justified in saying that * from 
 the government of the Isaurian emperors a new principle 
 of life had sprung which was to enrich the world for ever ’, 
 the would-be pilgrim of the eighth century was more likely 
 to have heard that the possibility of adequate protection 
 was negligible, and that the Ummayaid Caliphate, which 
 reached its period of crowning success under Walid (705-15) 
 and had established its control over Spain in one direction 
 and penetrated to Northern India and almost to China in 
 another, had gained a firm hold on Syria and established a 
 domination of which a great mosque at Damascus and the 
 famous Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem were significant 
 evidence. It is to the credit of the man who is perhaps 
 the first, certainly the most famous, of early pilgrims of 
 English race that with the enthusiasm of youth which alone 
 could make the idea either conceivable in itself or possible 
 of achievement he should have undertaken about 722 so 
 formidable and hazardous a journey. 
 
 Willibald, later Bishop of Eichstadt but the nephew of 
 St. Boniface, possibly of Kentish birth, certainly of English 
 education, is the promoter of an adventure which may justly 
 be called heroic, and his Hodeporicon is the record of his 
 journey.2. Like Arculf, he did not write it himself, but 
 
 1 Adamn., op. cit., iii, 3 (ed. Geyer, pp. 286-8). 
 
 2 Printed by D’Achery and Mabillon in Acta Sanctorum Ordinis 
 S. Benedicti, Saec. III, pars. ii (Paris, 1672), pp. 367-83; (Venice, 1734), 
 PP. 332-53; in the series of Itimeva Hierosolymitana, published by the 
 Societé de l’Orient Latin (Geneva, 1879) from the text of T. A. 
 Tobler; and in English, slightly abbreviated, by the Palestine Pilgrims’ 
 Text Society (London, 1895). 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 67 
 
 dictated it, only not in this case to a learned abbot of Iona 
 but to one of the most ingenuous and delightful of nuns. 
 She is, she assures us, an unworthy child of the Saxon race, 
 a poor specimen of humanity (quasi homuncula) in character 
 and attainments, a woman and tainted with the fragile 
 helplessness of her sex (fragilt sexus iwmbecillitate corrupti- 
 bilis), and she is writing for the great Bishop’s spiritual 
 children, reverend priests, elegant deacons of distinguished 
 ability, abbots and monks, plucking like a wilful uninstructed 
 child a few flowers, ete. After telling the story of the 
 saintly bishop’s early life she relates the pilgrimage in which 
 he persuaded his unwilling father and his brother to join. 
 They set out from Hamelmouth, near the modern Southamp- 
 ton, and make their way to Rouen and thence through 
 Liguria to Lucca, where the father dies.1. The nun’s know- 
 ledge of geography is a little vague or her mind confused, 
 for she makes the pilgrims cross the Alps apparently after 
 leaving Lucca. However, they reach Rome, escaping military 
 violence, and after returning thanks at the Basilica of St. 
 Peter proceed by sea from Naples to Reggio and so to Sicily 
 where, she assures us, an eruption of Etna is wont to be 
 stayed by placing the veil of St. Agatha upon it.2. From 
 Syracuse they cross the Adriatic to the south of the Morea 
 and thence proceed by way of Chios and Samos to Ephesus. 
 The places visited in Asia are not easy to identify, but they 
 include Patara, and after much privation the pilgrims sail 
 to Cyprus. After further journeyings they reach by sea 
 the territory of the Saracens and find themselves at Emesa 
 where the party of eight is cast into prison. Through the 
 influence of a Spaniard they are at last set free and travel 
 100 miles to Damascus where they stay a week. Thence 
 they proceed on foot to Nazareth and Cana, where is one 
 of the six water-pots used at the Marriage-feast and where 
 they partake of the wine which it contains.? The narrative 
 as it brings them to Jerusalem is full of Scriptural references 
 but singularly free from embellishments. At Galgala the 
 pilgrims see the stones taken up by the Israelites when 
 crossing the Jordan five miles away, and the spring of the 
 1 Vita S. Willibaldi, c. 9 [8]. 
 
 2 Ibid., 12 [10]. 
 asi Did. 10 [13]. 
 
68 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 prophet Elisha. At Jerusalem it is really noteworthy 
 that the narrative records that Calvary was once outside 
 the walls and so continued till the time of Helena, who 
 included it within the city.1 A difficulty is thus solved 
 which does not seem to have occurred to the other pilgrims 
 we have been studying. The Sepulchre is described as 
 cut out of the rock and having a ‘ lectus’ inside on which 
 our Lord’s Body lay. Nothing is said of its ornamentation 
 save that over the Sepulchre is constructed a marvellous 
 house. Willibald visits also the Church called Holy Sion, 
 and mention is made of a cross before the gate of the city 
 where the Jews had tried to deprive the Eleven Apostles 
 of the Body of the Blessed Virgin after her death: she had 
 died in Holy Sion, and angels came and took her from the 
 hands of the Apostles and carried her to Paradise. Her 
 memorial (not, it is stated, her resting-place) is in the Valley 
 of Jehoshaphat. There is a striking description of the Church 
 of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives, and another of a 
 ‘ gloriosa domus ’—the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. 
 At Afframia they see the tombs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
 —Adam has disappeared from the list—and of their wives. 
 We cannot stay to trace the further wanderings ; but four 
 visits in all are recorded as paid to Jerusalem. On the last 
 the future Bishop bought himself some balsam and filled 
 a calabash with it.2 Into the calabash he inserted a hollow 
 stem which he had filled with petroleum: he cut it level 
 with the opening and then closed it. In consequence when 
 they came to Tyre and the citizens searched their baggage 
 to see if they had anything hidden (aliquid absconditum) in 
 it, they found the calabash which Willibald had and smelt 
 the petroleum ; but the balsam they did not find. Had they 
 found anything, says the nun, they would speedily have 
 punished them with martyrdom. But they did not find 
 anything, and so let them go. We must confess that we 
 do not know what would have been regarded as the appro- 
 priate comment upon this remarkable example of sanctified 
 ingenuity ; for the good nun of Heidenheim makes no 
 observation at all but merely goes on to record that it took 
 the pilgrims from St. Andrew’s Day to the week before 
 
 1’ Via, 18. 2 Ibid., 23 [28]. 
 
CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES a.p. 500-800 69 
 
 the following Easter, i.e. over three months at the least, 
 to sail from the coast of Palestine to Constantinople. There 
 they saw the tombs of St. Andrew, St. Timothy and St. Luke, 
 and also that of St. John Chrysostom. After a stay of two 
 years they went to Niceea, where the church was a round 
 church like that of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives 
 and where the great Council of 318 bishops had been held 
 some four centuries before. In the church there were the 
 pictures of the bishops who had been present at the Council. 
 After returning to Constantinople the party made their way 
 back to Italy two years later, i.e. apparently in 728, passing 
 on the voyage the Island of Vulcan (Lipari)—the Hell of 
 Theoderic—which furnishes the most vigorous piece of 
 description in the whole narrative. In Italy Willibald goes to 
 Monte Cassino : it was seven years since he had left Rome and 
 ten since he had first left his native land. After ten years more, 
 spent in the observance of the Rule of St. Benedict, he was 
 sent by Pope Gregory III to join St. Boniface in instructing 
 the nation of the Franks,? and at last, at the age of 41, was 
 consecrated to the episcopate at Salzburg,? to begin a new 
 stage in a most eventful career. 
 
 Ithas been said of the Treatise upon the Holy Places compiled 
 by the Venerable Bede that he traverses practically the whole 
 range of the narrative of Arculf, but in about one-third of 
 the space. As one looks back over the present study, one 
 can but admire once more by comparison the marvellous 
 skill of the Father of English History. And yet, in spite of 
 all the omissions, and even it may be the misinterpretations 
 as well as the defects, it is impossible not to hope that at 
 least something of the glamour and fascination of these early 
 narratives of Christian travel may survive even the clumsiness 
 of our modern handling. If it tempts some at any rate to 
 read for themselves in the pages of the Itinera Hierosolymitana 
 or of the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society the fuller story 
 and in the work of Professor Beazley on ‘The Dawn of 
 Modern Geography’ a critical discussion from a somewhat 
 different point of view, the labour will at any rate not have 
 been expended in vain. 
 
 1 Vita, 24 (30). 2 Third, 27: (34); 
 3 Ibid., 29 (37). 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 THE VIKING AGE 
 
 By Professor ALLEN Mawer, M.A. 
 
 OS) the great movements which have contributed to the 
 
 making of modern Europe, the Viking movement, 
 though certainly among the greatest, is probably the least 
 familiar to the majority of historical students, professional 
 and amateur alike. The Vikings can be shown to be pioneers 
 in geographical discovery, chief among the founders of 
 modern commerce, the possessors of a literature of unsur- 
 passed value, men endowed with the highest technical and 
 artistic skill, but all this is a discovery of the last fifty to a 
 hundred years. How is it that the age of the Vikings has 
 thus been neglected and its importance so long unrecognized ? 
 
 The chief cause lies probably in the general misconception 
 of the character and meaning of the movement. Our know- 
 ledge of the Vikings was, until the last half century or so, 
 drawn almost entirely from the works of medieval . Latin 
 chroniclers, writing for the most part in monasteries and other 
 kindred schools of learning which had only too often felt 
 the devastating hand of the Viking raiders. They naturally 
 regarded them as little better than pirates, and they were 
 never tired of expatiating upon their cruelty, their violence, 
 and their general love of anarchy. It is only during the last 
 fifty years that we have been able to revise our ideas of the 
 early Scandinavian peoples and to form a juster conception 
 of the part which they played in European civilization. 
 The change has come about chiefly in two ways. First, 
 and chronologically the earlier, the literature of the Scan- 
 dinavian peoples is no longer a sealed book to us. Northern 
 literature has been a subject of interest to us ever since 
 the days of the poet Gray with his Descent of Odin and The 
 Fatal Sisters, but the general popularizing of the literature 
 
THE VIKING AGE 71 
 
 of the North belongs to the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century when, to mention but a few names, we have the great 
 work of William Morris in translation and adaptation of 
 the old legends and sagas, of Sir George Dasent in renderings 
 of such great stories as that of Burnt Njal, and lastly of 
 such scholars as Vigfusson and York Powell who devoted 
 themselves chiefly to the interpretation of the ancient language 
 and its literature. Through the work of such writers as these 
 we have come to recognize that Scandinavia, and more 
 particularly Norway and Iceland, possesses a heroic literature 
 which can on its own merits stand side by side with the 
 great literatures of Greece and Rome and fear nothing 
 from the comparison. 
 
 Secondly, and it is on this point that one would wish 
 to lay special stress here, archeology has within the 
 last half century become an exact science, and the work 
 of archeologists, generally themselves of Scandinavian 
 birth, upon the rich finds which have been brought 
 to light during the last century or so in the Scandinavian 
 kingdoms has given us a vast body of concrete fact with the 
 aid of which we can reconstruct the civilization of the Viking 
 period far more satisfactorily than we could from the sagas 
 alone. 
 
 The period of Scandinavian history, and indeed of the 
 history of Northern Europe generally, to which the term 
 ** Viking ” has been applied extends roughly from the middle 
 of the eighth century to the end of the first quarter of the 
 eleventh century. The commencement of the period was 
 marked by a series of piratical raids upon the coasts of 
 England, Western Scotland, and Ireland, and upon Frankish 
 territory. Its climax was reached when in the course of the 
 ninth century Scandinavian kingdoms were established in 
 Ireland, Man, and the Hebrides, and in the Northern, Midland, 
 and Eastern districts of England, and its close was marked 
 by the consolidation of the Scandinavian kingdoms in the 
 tenth century under Olaf Tryggvason in Norway, Olaf 
 Skotkonung in Sweden, and, greatest of all, King Knut in 
 Denmark, who for a brief time held the whole of Scandinavia 
 and the British Isles in one vast confederacy. 
 
 What were the causes which gave rise to this great Viking 
 movement? There is an old belief among the Scandinavian 
 
72 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 peoples that at some early period in their history their country 
 was overpopulated and that, as it could not support so large 
 a number of people, the active youth of the nation were 
 obliged to find fresh homes and possessions in foreign lands. 
 The father himself often drove out his younger sons in 
 order to provide for his eldest son. This over population 
 is attributed to polygamy. It is doubtful if polygamy 
 necessarily leads to overpopulation, and it was certainly 
 not the universal practice in ancient Scandinavia, but it does 
 seem probable that at one time that country was much more 
 thickly populated than at present, and polygamy among 
 the ruling classes would mean the presence of a large number 
 of younger sons for whom it was necessary to make provision. 
 Other causes are not far to seek. The dwellers on the 
 coast of the North Sea and the Baltic felt all that love of 
 freedom and of enterprise which is the birthright of sea-girt 
 nations, and when great kings or chieftains like Harold 
 Fairhair in Norway endeavoured to consolidate the petty 
 kingships under one sovereign their love of independence 
 was outraged. Their nearest way of escape lay over the 
 sea, and they straightway sought new homes in distant 
 lands where they might lead a free and independent life. 
 More important than this is the relation in which the rise 
 of the Viking power stood to the decline of the great trading 
 empire which immediately preceded it, viz. the Frisian. 
 Unfortunately we know only too little of this great power 
 whose domination of the trade of Western Europe lasted 
 from the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century 
 to the days when it fell before the power first of Charles 
 Martel and then later of Charlemagne. According to 
 Procopius, Frisians took part in the Saxon invasion of Britain. 
 In Bede we hear of Frisian merchants in London, and there 
 is mention in the Life of St. Liudger of the expulsion of 
 Frisian merchants from York in the second half of the eighth 
 century. Frisians and Scandinavians were already in conflict 
 in the sixth century, for it was in a raid on Frisia that Hygelac, 
 the sovereign and patron of Beowulf, fell somewhere about 
 A.D. 512. When Alfred was at war with the Danes we 
 find Frisian sailors in: his service, and it is clear that 
 Frisians and Vikings alike were now far ahead of the 
 English in the art of shipbuilding. The extent of their travels 
 
THE VIKING AGE 73 
 
 westwards is illustrated by the name Fresicum mare given 
 by Nennius to the Irish Sea. On the Continent there were 
 important Frisian trading settlements at Mainz and Worms, 
 and from North Frisia they made their way to the Eider, 
 the old boundary of the Scandinavian North. From here 
 they opened up trade with the Baltic and the North Sea. 
 Their great trading centre was Dorestad, already mentioned 
 in the seventh century, lying on an arm of the Rhine to the 
 south of the Zuyder Zee. From here one trade route went 
 south along the Lek, one of the outlets of the Rhine, towards 
 England, while the Zuyder Zee itself gave an outlet to the North. 
 When St. Anskar in A.D. 826 went on his first Christianizing 
 mission to Sweden he went to Slesvik by Dorestad and thence 
 made his way to Birka, later Bj6rk6, the oldest of the great 
 trading towns of Sweden, on the shores of Lake Malar, a 
 town which has now disappeared. The very name of this 
 town is of intense interest, as it bears witness to the ancient 
 importance of Frisian trade. The first element in this 
 name is not, as one might think, Objork, < birch-tree,’ 
 but the word birk, still used in Danish to denote a district 
 with its own special rights, privileges, and laws. This word 
 in its turn is not of Scandinavian origin but a loan-word from 
 Frisian, in which Dirk is used in the same sense, and the old 
 trading city of Birka must have been founded, not by Swedes, 
 but by Frisians who, from the special trading privileges 
 accorded to them, gave the place this name. This particular 
 place-name has been tracked down by Professor Wadstein 
 over the whole of North-Western Europe, and he has shown 
 that further examples of it may be found at the head of the 
 gulf of Bothnia, in Pirkkié on the Tornea, in the South of 
 Finland, at Bj6rk6 near Viborg, in the North of Norway in the 
 old district of Haalogaland, the home of Ohthere, at Bjarkoy. 
 In all these cases the early forms show that we have to do, 
 not with birch-trees, but with this old word birk, and 
 Professor Wadstein believes that we may well have further 
 examples in BjérkGen at the entrance to Trondhjem Fjord, 
 Bjerkeréen near Bergen, Bjerk6é near Tunsberg, on Christiania 
 Fjord, Bjérk6 off Géteborg, near the ancient market of 
 Kongaelf, and Bjork6 off the coast of Sweden opposite to 
 the island of Gothland. It is noteworthy that all these 
 places lie on the great trading routes of North-Western Europe, 
 
74 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 and they demonstrate clearly, when taken in conjunction 
 with other evidence, that the Frisians had already opened 
 up great trade-routes before the Vikings rose to power, 
 and one can well understand that when the Frisian power 
 was crushed under the heel of the Frankish empire the 
 Vikings saw their chance. The overthrow of the Frisians 
 and the Saxons brought the Danes and the Franks face to 
 face along the Eider boundary, and henceforward there was 
 no peace between them either on sea or land. 
 
 The great success of the Viking movement certainly 
 depended to a large extent on their own military and naval 
 prowess, their personal character, their instinct for organiza- 
 tion, but it also rested largely on the weakness, division, 
 and degeneracy of their contemporaries in Christian Europe 
 at the time. The Carolingian Empire was in the throes of 
 dissolution and the coasts of Western Europe began to swarm 
 with heathen Northmen eager for devastation and plunder. 
 They first visited England and Ireland about the year 780, 
 and by 800 they were in full conflict with the Franks, 
 where the divided counsels of the successors of Charlemagne 
 gave them a ready opening. It was the Danes and 
 Norwegians, as we might expect from their geographical 
 position, who chiefly visited our shores, the Danes ultimately 
 making their chief settlements in North-Eastern and Midland 
 England, the Norsemen in Ireland, the Western Islands, 
 the Isle of Man, and North-Western England generally. The 
 Swedes found their outlet chiefly on the shores of the Baltic, 
 though we must remember that much of what we now call 
 Sweden then belonged to Denmark or Norway—including the 
 provinces of Bohuslan, Halland, Skaane and Blekinge. 
 
 The story of these Scandinavian settlements in the British 
 Isles and in Normandy is, or should be, familiar to us, but 
 we must not forget that Scandinavian influences prevailed 
 in other districts beside those of Western Europe. Already 
 Finland and Lapland had largely been settled, and the 
 Norse sagas tell of active trade with the shores of the White 
 Sea and the ancient Bjarmaland, on the edge of the Ural 
 Mountains, and behind the stories of the voyages of explora- 
 tion of Ohthere and Wulfstan narrated to Alfred the Great 
 there probably lies a long story of trade, first round the North 
 Cape into the White Sea and second through the Baltic to 
 
THE VIKING AGE 75 
 
 the coast of Esthonia. Then too we must remember that 
 the Swedes ruled the whole of the Baltic provinces of Russia 
 and indeed founded the Russian Empire itself in the ninth 
 century. ‘Russ’ was a name given by the Finns to the 
 Swedes, and in course of time this name of the alien rulers 
 of the Slavs came to be applied to the whole people in much 
 the same way as the name of the ‘ Frankish’ or ‘ French’ 
 rulers of the Romance-speaking peoples of France came to 
 be applied to the people themselves. The names of many 
 Russian towns, such as Novgorod, are pure Scandinavian. 
 Archeological finds of pure Northern origin are numerous. 
 
 Yet further south did the Viking influence extend. 
 Adventurers made their way overland as far south as 
 Constantinople or Miklagard, ‘ great enclosure’ as they 
 called it, and there won honour and wealth in the service 
 of the Byzantine emperors. Many Variags, as they were 
 called, being discontended with their service under the Grand 
 Duke Vladimir of Russia, journeyed to Constantinople, 
 there to enter the service of the Emperor. These Variags, 
 and others who had preceded them, became the emperors’ 
 well-known Varangian guard, and did them yeoman service. 
 To be a Varangian was deemed a praiseworthy distinction, 
 and men of the highest birth often enrolled themselves in 
 the guard. Harold Sigurdsson, half-brother of St. Olaf, 
 was for a long time captain of the Varangian guard, earned 
 wealth and honour, and returned home to become king of 
 Norway under the well-known name of Harold Hardrada, 
 the Norse king who was defeated at the battle of Stamford 
 Bridge. From Constantinople the Varangians were sent 
 to all parts of the Byzantine Empire. Harold Hardrada 
 himself visited the Greek Archipelago, Sicily, and North 
 Africa. An interesting memorial of these journeys is still 
 extant in the famous marble lion which the Venetians brought 
 from Athens to Venice in 1687, and which now stands at the 
 entrance to the Arsenal of that city. Formerly it stood on 
 the shores of the Pirzeus, which from it bore the name of the 
 *“Porto Leone.’ The lion itself is of Greek workmanship, 
 but it has a Scandinavian runic inscription on it, unfortunately 
 too much worn away for us to be able to decipher it with 
 certainty. 
 
 Enough has been said, perhaps, by way of introduction 
 
76 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 as to the extent and importance of Viking activities. Let 
 us now consider that side of their equipment which was 
 the immediate cause of their contact with the peoples of 
 Western Europe, whether in trade or warfare, viz. their ships. 
 The art of shipbuilding was carried to a high level of excellence 
 and the number of vessels was great. During the course of 
 the Viking attacks on England and France we hear more 
 than once of fleets of 250 or even 350 vessels, and when 
 Knut the Great conquered Norway he had a fleet of some 
 1,200 vessels, which in modern reckoning is the equivalent 
 of 1,440, as the Norwegians, like other Scandinavian peoples, 
 used the long hundred in their reckoning, that is ten twelves 
 instead of ten tens, a form of reckoning of which traces are 
 still to be found in the parts of England most strongly 
 affected by Scandinavian influence. 
 
 In vessels of the pre-Viking age in the North we find no 
 sails. Now they have regularly a single mast and sail. 
 The sail is usually of course woollen material, often with blue, 
 red and green stripes. The magnificent sails were a source 
 of much pride to their possessors. Thus we are told of 
 Sigurd ‘ Jerusalem-farer’ that on his way back from Jerusalem 
 to Constantinople he lay for half a month off the coast of 
 Greece and, though he had a favourable wind from the south 
 to carry him through the Hellespont, he preferred to wait 
 for a side wind so that his sails might be set lengthwise along 
 the ship, for all his sails were trimmed with purple both fore 
 and aft and could be admired by spectators on both sides 
 of the straits. When the king entered Constantinople he 
 sailed quite close to the shore so that from there one could 
 see the whole expanse of the sails forming as it were one 
 unbroken wall. 
 
 The size of a ship was reckoned according to the number 
 of rowing benches, two rowers being seated on every bench. 
 Thus a ‘fifteen’ or ‘twenty-seater’ means a vessel having 
 fifteen or twenty benches or pairs of oars. 
 
 Olaf Tryggvason’s vessel, the Long Serpent, had thirty-four 
 benches of oars, while Knut the Great had one of sixty-nine 
 pairs of oars. The rudder was placed on the starboard side 
 of the ship, hence called the steer or starboard side, while the 
 gunwale was adorned with a row of shields painted alternately 
 in different colours. The stem often ended in a dragon’s 
 

 

 
THE VIKING AGE 77 
 
 head, done over with gold, whilst the stern was frequently 
 shaped like a dragon’s tail, so that the vessel itself was often 
 called a “‘dragon’”’. On going into action the ships were 
 lashed together so that the fight resembled an engagement 
 in the field. When at anchor, especially in harbour, tents 
 and pavilions were erected on deck for the accommodation 
 of the leaders. 
 
 The difference between a war and a trading-ship is well 
 illustrated by Snorri’s story of the escape of the Norwegian 
 Harek of Thjotta through Copenhagen Sound after the battle 
 of Helgeia in South Sweden. His king, St. Olaf, had returned 
 to Norway overland, but Harek deemed himself too old for 
 such a journey and determined to go back by sea. What 
 happened may be told in the words of Morris in his translation 
 of the passage :— “‘ Harek did as he had said; he abode a 
 fair wind, and then sailed west about Skaney until he came 
 east of the Knolls, and with a wind behind, blowing a 
 breeze. Then he let strike sail and mast, and take down 
 the vane, and wrap all the ship above the water in grey 
 hangings, and let men row on a few benches fore and aft, 
 but let most of the men sit low in the ship. Now King 
 ‘Knut’s watch saw the ship, and spoke among themselves 
 as to what ship it could be, and guessed that there would 
 be flitted salt or herring, whereas they saw few men, and 
 little rowing, and moreover the ship seemed grey and 
 untarred, like a ship bleached by the sun, and withal 
 they saw that the ship was much low in the water. 
 But when Harek came forth into the Sound, he let raise the 
 mast and hoist sail, and let set up gilded vanes, and the sail 
 was white as snowdrift and done with red and blue bends.” 
 Naval camouflage is not an invention of the late war. 
 
 Fortunately we are not confined to written sources for 
 our knowledge of the Viking ships. In Norway more than 
 one Viking ship has been found, the most famous being those 
 of Gokstad and Oseberg, both from burial mounds on the 
 shores of Christiania or, as we must learn to say, Oslo Fjord. 
 They owe their preservation to the fact that they were used 
 as burial chambers for the persons to whom they belonged. 
 The oldest of these vessels is the Gokstad find. It is clinker- 
 built with seats for sixteen pairs of rowers and is 78 ft. long 
 and 16 ft. broad amidships. In form and workmanship 
 
78 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 it is not surpassed by modern vessels of a similar kind and, 
 to judge from the remains found in it, it must date from 
 about A.D. 900. 
 
 The Oseberg ship is of a rather different type. The 
 gunwale is lower and the whole vessel broader. The general 
 impression it gives us is more of that type of vessel which 
 Harek tried to turn his warship into, but the rich carving both 
 of stem and stern, and also of the gunwale near the stern, 
 suggest that it was probably not used for mere trade purposes. 
 It was in the end used as the grave-chamber of a woman, 
 and it is probable that it belonged to some wealthy king’s 
 daughter, or perhaps to a queen. 
 
 This account of the ships of the Vikings may serve to 
 remind us that the relations between the Northmen and the 
 rest of the world were by no means entirely of a warlike 
 character. There was much peaceful intercourse, but its 
 importance has as a rule been greatly underestimated by 
 historians of the period. 
 
 One must in the first instance speak of the settlement 
 of Iceland. The story isa simple one. It commenced about 
 A.D. 870 when many Norse nobles sought there, for them- 
 selves and their followers, a freer life than they could obtain 
 under the growing power of Harold Fairhair. It was greatly 
 strengthened by settlers both from Norway and from Ireland 
 and the Western islands when that power was firmly 
 established by the Battle of Hafrsfjord, and by the year 
 930 the settlement was virtually complete. Iceland was more 
 purely Scandinavian than any other settlement made during 
 the Viking Age. Here we have, not the case of one civilization 
 grafted on another and earlier one, as in England, Ireland, 
 or the Frankish Empire, but the transference of the best and 
 finest elements in a nation to new and virgin soil where, 
 for good or ill, they were free to develop their civilization 
 on almost entirely independent lines. Settlers from the 
 Western islands and from Ireland may have brought Celtic 
 elements, and Christianity was not without its influence 
 when it was introduced from Norway at the close of the tenth 
 century, but on the whole we can see in Iceland just what 
 Viking civilization was capable of when left to itself. 
 
 At first the settlers lived in almost complete isolation, 
 political and religious, from one another, but they soon 
 
THE VIKING AGE 79 
 
 found that some form of organization was necessary, and 
 groups of settlers began by choosing from among their number 
 a go%t, or chieftain, half-priest, half leader, who was the speaker 
 at their moot and their representative in negotiation with 
 neighbouring groups. Then, continued disputes and the 
 lack of a common law led to the establishment of a central 
 moot or albing, with a speaker to speak one single law for 
 all. But the Norsemen were much better at making consti- 
 tutions and enacting laws than they were at observing them 
 when instituted, and the condition of Iceland has been vividly 
 if roughly summarized as one of ‘ all law and no government ’. 
 The local things or the national althing might enact perfect 
 laws, but there was no compelling force to make them obeyed. 
 
 The failure of the Icelandic Commonwealth is amply compen- 
 sated for by the rich intellectual development of Icelandic 
 literature, which owed many of its characteristic features 
 to the fact that it was written in a land almost completely 
 detached from the main currents of Western medieval 
 thought and the general trend of European history, but in 
 itself that failure is full of deepest import for a right under- 
 standing of the part played by Viking civilization in Europe. 
 Powerful and highly developed as that civilization was in 
 many ways, it only reached its highest and best expression 
 when brought into fruitful contact with other and older 
 civilizations. There it found the corrective for certain 
 tendencies of too strongly individualistic character leading 
 to political and intellectual anarchy, while at the same time 
 by its own energy and vigour it quickened the life of the 
 older civilizations where they were tending to become 
 effete and outworn. 
 
 But Iceland was not their only peaceful settlement. From 
 Iceland, Erik the Red when outlawed made his way to 
 Greenland, and soon, in spite of the strenuous climate and 
 the unceasing hardships, extensive Norse settlements were 
 established, and by the end of the tenth century extensive 
 trade in walrus tusks, whaleblubber, hides, and fish of various 
 kinds had been set up. 
 
 There is a characteristic touch of Norse shrewdness and 
 irony in the story that Erik the Red called the land Green-land 
 for he said it would give people a desire to go there if it had 
 a good name! 
 
80 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 The Norsemen had first been drawn to Greenland, so the 
 story went, because a certain Gunnbjoérn, sailing west from 
 Iceland, had caught sight of land. Now they were to venture 
 yet further afield. Early navigation in the Mediterranean 
 and elsewhere was almost entirely a question of hugging the 
 coast. In the absence of any compass to steer by, it was 
 but rarely that men ventured to sail straight across the open 
 sea. It was one of the great triumphs of Norse sailors that 
 they did not shrink from venturing boldly across the unknown, 
 and there is no more striking example of it than the voyage 
 which Leif, the son of Erik, made from Greenland in the 
 spring of the year 1000, when he caught the first glimpse of 
 a land which he called Vinland, or Wine-land, and gained the 
 nickname of ‘ Leif the Lucky’. He had been driven far out 
 of his course, and came upon a land with great forests, self- 
 sown wheat, and vinestocks. A second expedition in which 
 Leif’s father and his brother Thorstein took part was 
 less lucky, for they were driven back by contrary winds so 
 far east that they caught sight of Iceland and so far to the 
 south that they saw the seabirds off the coast of Ireland. 
 In the spring of 1003 a fresh expedition under Thorfinn 
 Karlsefne, with three ships and 140 men, set sail from 
 Greenland. Two days’ sail brought them to a land which 
 they called Helleland, a land of great flat rocks and Arctic 
 foxes, which has been identified with Labrador. A further 
 day and a half’s sail brought them to a well-wooded land 
 which they called Mark-land, that is ‘ forest-land’, which 
 may well have been Newfoundland. Lured by the hope of 
 finding Leif’s Vinland, with its wine-grapes, they continued 
 to sail south, passed a ship-shaped headland, but were still 
 faced by a cold and inhospitable coast. Soon, however, the 
 coast was broken by a succession of creeks, a landing was 
 made up one of these, two Scottish runners who were of the 
 party were sent to explore, and brought back news and 
 examples of the long-sought grapes and wheat. The winter 
 was spent a little further south in a pleasant grass-grown land, 
 and in the spring, travelling yet further south, they reached 
 a good and pleasant land which resembled Leif’s own Vinland. 
 Soon, however, the Norse settlers got on to bad terms with the 
 natives, and so difficult did the situation become that in the 
 summer of 1006 they sailed back home. Exactly how far 
 
THE VIKING AGE 81 
 
 south the Norsemen sailed will never be satisfactorily settled, 
 the indications in the saga are too vague. They must however, 
 have gone a good way south to find a climate which would 
 grow grapes, where there was no frost in winter, and the cattle 
 could remain out all night. Some of these details must be 
 definitely historical, for as early as the second half of the 
 eleventh century Adam of Bremen tells of an island called 
 Vinland, so named because it produced self-grown vinestocks 
 and the best wine. Whatever may have been the exact 
 position of Vinland, it is clear that the Norsemen discovered 
 America five hundred years before Columbus. 
 
 Voyages of Polar discovery were also started by them when, 
 about the year 1050, Harold Hardrada sailed as far north 
 in the Ice sea as he was able in the attempt to discover 
 how far that sea stretched. Adam of Bremen, to whom 
 we owe our knowledge of this expedition, tells us that Harold 
 was driven back by storms, but from further details which 
 he gives us Dr. Bugge has shown that there is good reason 
 to believe that he also explored the White Sea in the hope of 
 strengthening the trade in skins with the north of Russia. 
 
 Sweden was not behindhand in the expansion of trade and 
 in the establishment of new settlements. At that time a 
 great part of her coast-line was in Danish or Norwegian hands, 
 but she had extensive relations with the countries to the 
 south and east, which were easiest of access, and we find at 
 the same time frequent traces of friendly intercourse between 
 Sweden and Western Europe, and, more especially, between 
 Sweden and England. Many memorial stones still standing 
 in Sweden bear witness to the journeys of Swedes to England, 
 their business or their death there. The Scandinavian 
 countries are very rich in Anglo-Saxon coins, and though at 
 first we might be inclined to attribute their frequency to 
 that unhappy system whereby Ethelred the Unready and 
 other English kings paid Danegeld to buy off the Viking raids, 
 an examination of the places where these coins have been 
 chiefly found shows that such is not the case. Most of the 
 Viking raiders undoubtedly came from Denmark, Norway and 
 Western Sweden, whereas the coins have been found chiefly 
 in the eastern districts of Sweden, round Lake Malar and in 
 the neighbourhood of the great waterways connecting Sweden 
 and the Baltic, but above all on the islands of Gothland and 
 
 G 
 
82 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Oland. Some of these coins must have come by way of 
 trade from Norway and Denmark, the Vikings when they 
 returned home spending as recklessly as they had plundered, 
 but the majority must be due to direct intercourse with 
 England. It is worthy of notice in this connexion that the 
 Swedish National Museum at Stockholm is richer in Anglo- 
 Saxon coins than is our own British Museum. 
 
 Eastwards their first settlement was on the shores of Lake 
 Ladoga, at the place which they called Aldeigjuborg, 
 established about 800. By the year 839 some of them had 
 made their way overland to Constantinople, for there is a 
 curious story from that year telling how an embassy from 
 the Byzantine emperor visited the court of Louis the Pious, 
 and how certain people among them, calling themselves 
 Ros, i.e. Russian, asked to be allowed to return direct home 
 instead of facing the perils of the journey back from 
 Constantinople overland to their own home. Louis made 
 inquiries as to their origin and found that they were really 
 Swedes. The story of the intervention of Swedish nobles 
 in the affairs of Russia, whereby they became its virtual 
 rulers, is first recorded in the pages of the Russian monk 
 Nestor, and its full significance has been explained by Vilhelm 
 Thomsen in his masterly book on the founding of the Russian 
 kingdom. By the year 882 they were as far south as Kieff, and 
 soon they had their fleets on the Black Sea and the Sea of 
 Marmora and were threatening Constantinople. From the 
 political point of view it is easy to exaggerate the importance 
 of this Swedish element in Russia, for the evidence is clear 
 that these Swedish princes soon became completely 
 Slavicized, lost all sense of their ultimate racial affinities, 
 and became Slavonic princes pure and simple. But, however 
 that may be, the story is remarkable for its giving yet further 
 and striking proof of the expansive energy and initiative 
 of the Scandinavian peoples, and, if it had few political 
 results, it was all important in the development of trade and 
 commerce. 
 
 Of that commerce there are various witnesses. Among the 
 most interesting are the frequent finds of Oriental and 
 especially of Arabian coins. These coins first made their 
 way to Scandinavia about the beginning of the ninth century 
 and are far more common in Sweden than in the rest of 
 
THE VIKING AGE 83 
 
 Scandinavia, some 380,000 having been found in Sweden 
 alone. Some of these coins may have been brought home 
 by Viking raiders, who we know to have visited the Moorish 
 kingdom of Spain in the ninth and tenth centuries, but there 
 can be no doubt that the vast majority reached Scandinavia 
 overland through Russia, where extensive finds of Arabian 
 coins mark the route along which trade at that time travelled 
 from Asia to the North. The greater number of these coins 
 were minted at Samarcand, east of the Caspian Sea, others 
 at Baghdad on the Euphrates. Further evidence of the 
 importance of this trade is to be found in the fact that at 
 the end of the Viking period the Persian weight-system was 
 introduced into the North and that the earliest Swedish 
 coinage is based on it. Olaf Skotkonung’s coins, coined at 
 Sigtuna, weigh half a Persian drachma. 
 
 Trading was a matter of great difficulty and many risks in 
 those days. The line of division between merchant and 
 Viking was a slender one, and more than once we read how, 
 when merchants went on a trading expedition, they arranged 
 a truce until their business was concluded and then agreed 
 to treat each other as enemies. The trading was generally 
 carried on in large market-centres, and these centres avere 
 generally to be found in places where numbers of people 
 were accustomed to meet together for some religious or 
 political purpose. Thus Uppsala, an ancient centre of 
 worship in Sweden, had a large market, while one of the 
 most famous of all Scandinavian markets was that held in 
 Bohuslan on the Gétaely, at a spot where the boundaries of 
 the three northern kingdoms met, and where periodical 
 meetings were held for the settlement of business affecting 
 the three countries. Other permanent centres were 
 Skiringssalr on the S.W. coast of Norway, the lost Birka on 
 Lake Malar, to which reference has already been made, 
 Visby on the Island of Gothland, later one of the Hanse 
 towns, and Haddeby-Slesvik on the Eider, Denmark’s chief 
 channel of trade. The international character of much of 
 this trade is well-illustrated by an incident which once occurred 
 at the Gétaelv market. Onacertain occasion, a rich merchant 
 named Gille (the name is Celtic), surnamed the Russian 
 because of his numerous journeys to that country, set up his 
 booth in the market and received a visit from the Icelander 
 
84 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Hoskuldr, who was anxious to buy a female slave. Gille 
 drew back a curtain dividing off the inner part of the tent 
 and showed Hoskuldr twelve female slaves. Héskuldr 
 bought one and she proved to be an Irish king’s daughter, who 
 had been made captive by Viking raiders. This story serves 
 also to illustrate what was one of the chief articles of trade 
 at the time, viz. slaves, generally prisoners of war. Other 
 exports included furs, horses, wool, and fish, while the chief 
 articles of import would naturally be luxuries of clothing or 
 ornament. 
 
 While the Scandinavian kings often had a coinage of their 
 own in the lands which they conquered, in Scandinavia 
 itself there was no coinage until the end of the Viking period, 
 and foreign coins were used if prices were paid in coin at all. 
 As a matter of fact, large payments were usually made in 
 silver, whether in the forms of coins, ornaments, or ingots, 
 and the required amount was weighed rather than counted 
 out. The uncoined silver was often in the form of spirals, 
 and we have preserved from the period several spirals which 
 bear witness to the fact that trade was as full of tricks then 
 as it is now. These spirals are made of copper with a thin 
 coating only of silver. They must have been used in large 
 payments where the spiral would not have to be cut and the 
 fraud would not be detected. The weights used were 
 generally of iron, with a thin coating of bronze. They were 
 made thus so as to prevent trickery, for any attempt to 
 diminish the weight by scraping its surface would at once 
 reveal the iron beneath and the cheat would be exposed. 
 Trading journeys were for the most part made by sea. Inland 
 the lakes and rivers were used as far as was possible. There 
 were no roads at that time, and such travelling as was done 
 overland with goods had to be done with pack-horses. Carts 
 were almost unknown. 
 
 There can be little doubt of the importance of Viking 
 traders and settlers generally in developing the trade of the 
 lands in which they made settlements. In England one 
 cannot but feel that they must have done much in developing 
 the trade of the Eastern coast towns. Unfortunately we 
 have practically no contemporary evidence on this point, 
 but there must be long history behind the close relationship 
 between such English ports as Grimsby, Hull and King’s 
 
THE VIKING AGE 85 
 
 Lynn, and Scandinavia, which we find prevailing in post- 
 conquest days, and which Dr. Alexander Bugge has done so 
 much to illuminate. In Ireland we are very much luckier. 
 Both from the Irish annals and from the Icelandic sagas 
 we can glean a good deal about the influence of the Vikings 
 on Irish trade. It was the Vikings who developed the great 
 seaport towns, Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and 
 Limerick. The system whereby foreign merchants had to 
 barter their goods at the various country fairs was largely 
 done away with in favour of fixed markets at the important 
 centres. The wealth of the trading centres is illustrated in 
 more than one passage in the Irish chronicles and the Norse 
 sagas. The spoils carried off by the Irish after a victory near 
 Dublin in the year 1000 included “ gold, silver, bronze, and 
 precious stones, carbuncle gems, buffalo horns, and beautiful 
 goblets, much also of various vestures of all colours’’, and 
 similarly, a few years before, the Irish carried off from the 
 Vikings in Limerick “their jewels and their best property, 
 their saddles, beautiful and foreign, their gold and silver ; 
 their beautifully woven cloth of all colours and all kinds, 
 their satins and their silken cloths, pleasing and variegated, 
 both scarlet and green, and all sorts of cloth in like manner’’. 
 In Erbyggjasaga we hear of a merchant ship that came from 
 Dublin to Sneefellsness in Iceland in the year 1000. One of 
 the passengers, a woman named Thorgunna, had a large 
 chest containing beautifully embroidered bed-clothes, English 
 sheets, a silken quilt, and other costly wares, the like of which 
 were rare in Iceland. 
 
 These stories of the rich and varied possessions of the 
 Vikings in Ireland may serve to introduce us to the last 
 phase of our study of the Viking age, viz. the rich material 
 civilization of the period and the high artistic worth of many 
 of its products. The actual life and the houses of these 
 Northmen may have been simple and even primitive, but 
 even in their houses there was much rich carving of wood 
 with incidents from the mythological and heroic sagas and 
 the houses of great men were often hung with tapestry, and 
 even the household vessels at times were things of great 
 artistic beauty. It is, however, when we come to their dress 
 and ornaments that we see this wealth in all its beauty and 
 fullness. There can be little doubt that our Viking forefathers 
 
86 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 had attained a high standard of personal luxury and 
 adornment. If we visit the museums of Copenhagen, 
 Stockholm and Oslo-Christiania, we cannot but be impressed 
 by the wealth of ornaments displayed before us, magnificent 
 brooches of silver and bronze, massive silver neck rings and 
 girdles, arm-rings and finger-rings, large beads of silver 
 glass, rock-crystal, cornelian, amber and other materials. 
 The objects are not only evidence of the material wealth of the 
 Vikings, but also of their high artistic skill. At one time it 
 was usually thought that all antiquities showing artistic skill 
 must have been brought from abroad as plunder, but patient 
 research has shown clearly that the majority of the articles 
 showing the best technical skill must have been wrought 
 in Scandinavia itself, and there is a surprising scantiness 
 of such objects which can be shown definitely to be of foreign 
 manufacture. 
 
 The most characteristic of all these ornaments was 
 undoubtedly the brooch. It is usually of bronze, oval in 
 shape, with silver bosses. When found now the bronze is 
 usually green with verdigris, but it must originally have had 
 the brilliance of gold, and with their silver bosses and silver 
 wire round the edges the brooches must have been of splendid 
 appearance. The decorative art used in these various 
 articles is interesting. It is in that style once known as 
 ‘dragon’ style, but now commonly termed ‘animal 
 ornamentation’. There are no figures of dragons—fantastic 
 creatures with wings or such-like—neither have we the full forms 
 of any animal actually existing, but the ornamentation is 
 built up from animal elements by an entirely unrestrained 
 imagination. Thus we clearly have heads, limbs, and tails 
 of animals interwoven with one another in fantastic designs, 
 but it would be idle to try to find what particular animal 
 the artist has in mind. This highly characteristic form of 
 ornamentation is in fact based on that of a preceding period 
 in the culture of the North Teutonic peoples, but at the same 
 time it owes a great deal to foreign and, more especially, » 
 _ to Irish influence. Irish culture, art, and science played an 
 important part in the civilization of Europe in the early 
 Middle Ages, and one side of that culture, and indeed one 
 of its most striking sides, was its decorative art. We 
 have definite evidence that already early in the eighth 
 
THE VIKING AGE 87 
 
 century this influence was working with full force in 
 Scandinavia. 
 
 The story of Viking ornament and Viking decorative 
 design may in conclusion serve to remind us yet again of two 
 marks characteristic of the Viking age which we must always 
 bear in mind if we wish to understand it aright. The first is 
 that it is an age of curious contrasts of barbarism and culture, 
 direst cruelty and bloodthirstiness such as we find in the 
 story of Ragnar Lothbrok, combined with a strong legal sense 
 such as that which laid the foundations of what was ultimately 
 to become the twelfth century ‘jury by presentment’. The 
 second is that the Vikings were a race capable of developing 
 all that is best in civilization other than their own, whether 
 it be Irish ornamentation, Romanesque architecture, or 
 Frisian trade-routes. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ARAB TRAVELLERS AND MERCHANTS, A.D. 1000-1500 
 By Sir T. W. ARNOLD, C.LE., Litt.D. 
 
 ree the great days of Imperial Rome, the Western world 
 
 had not seen so vast an empire as that of the Arabs 
 in the eighth century of the Christian era. Weare accustomed 
 to think of this great Muhammadan empire as belonging to 
 the Orient; but if we remember that it stretched from the 
 Atlantic Ocean, from the shores of Morocco and Portugal, 
 all along the coast of North Africa and Egypt—that it 
 included Palestine and Syria, and that even when we trace 
 it on further east into Mesopotamia, we are still within 
 territory that once formed part of a Roman province—it 
 becomes clear that this new empire was a Mediterranean 
 power. Closer examination reveals to us that this was not 
 merely the case from a geographical point of view, but further 
 that the Arabs were the heirs of that Hellenistic culture, for 
 which a way was first opened by the conquests of Alexander 
 and which became so widely diffused throughout the eastern 
 provinces of the later Roman Empire. These Hellenistic 
 influences, moreover, were not confined to the countries 
 which once owed allegiance to Rome, but spread far eastward 
 into lands that the Roman armies never succeeded in reaching, 
 for the Oriental Christian Churches had cherished the 
 inheritance of Greek thought—philosophy, medicine, 
 mathematics, physical science—and had_ diffused its 
 stimulating influences through the channels of those Oriental 
 languages into which the works of Greek authors were 
 translated, and thus it spread among the Arabic-speaking 
 peoples. 
 
 Western Europe is apt to view the Muhammadan world as 
 something entirely remote from itself ; such a judgment leaves 
 out of consideration the fact that both the Christian West 
 and the Muhammadan East are in many respects heirs of the 
 same vivifying cultural influences, and that Islam in the 
 ultimate analysis of its civilization reveals itself as the 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 89 
 
 aftermath of Hellenism in the East. In our estimate of the 
 culture of the Muhammadan world we are apt to forget 
 that the population of the Arab Empire included the races 
 from which sprang St. John of Damascus and many another 
 great theologian of the Christian Church, and that the 
 revelation of Greek literature, to which in Europe the 
 intellectual movement of the Renaissance was largely due, 
 wrought a similar and even more profound influence on the 
 intellectual outlook of the Muslim world. The first translators 
 from the Greek into Arabic were members of the Jacobite 
 and Nestorian Churches, and their translation of Ptolemy 
 laid the foundation of that geographical science which 
 the Muhammadans were to carry so far. The very word for 
 ** geography ’’ in Arabic—a mere transcription of the Greek 
 into Arabic letters—indicates its origin, and it is to this 
 origin that Muhammadan geographical science owes much 
 of its sanity, its careful observation of actual facts, its 
 unceasing prosecution of the cognate studies of mathematics 
 and astronomy. We accordingly find a serious pursuit of 
 geographical science among the Arabs from the ninth century 
 onward ; it was often cultivated for its own sake, and the 
 geographical literature in the Arabic language is a very 
 creditable outcome of the Greek sources from which it grew. 
 ‘A further stimulus to geographical research was given by the 
 very immensity of the Arab empire, so long as it was still 
 undivided. There was a period during which the traveller 
 could pass from the confines of China to the pillars of Hercules, 
 from the banks of the Indus to the Cilician Gates, from the 
 Oxus to the shores of the Atlantic, without stepping outside 
 the boundaries of the territory ruled over by the Caliph in 
 Damascus or Baghdad. Even after this vast empire broke 
 up into separate principalities, the journey of the Muslim 
 traveller was facilitated by that brotherhood of Islam which 
 gives to the Muhammadan world its cosmopolitan character, 
 and enables community of faith to wipe out all differences of 
 race and origin. However many hundreds of miles the Muslim 
 might journey from his native town, he could confidently hope 
 for a welcome and generous hospitality at the hands of his 
 co-religionists, especially if he had any reputation for piety 
 or religious knowledge, and he might even chance to come 
 across a fellow townsman, even though his wanderings had 
 
90 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 carried him into the land of the infidels, far beyond the 
 boundaries of the Muslim empire; thus Ibn Battitah, an 
 energetic traveller of the fourteenth century, to whom reference 
 will be made later, tell us how on his arrival in a town in 
 China, which he calls Kanjanfu, the Muhammadan merchants 
 there came out to receive him with flags and a band of 
 musicians with trumpets, drums and horns, bringing horses 
 for him and his party, so that they rode into the city in a 
 triumphal procession. During his stay there he heard of the 
 arrival of a highly respected doctor of the law among the 
 Muhammadans of that part. His friends asked leave to 
 introduce this person to him, and he was announced as 
 Mawlana Qiwam ud-Din of Ceuta. As Ceuta was near his 
 own birthplace, Tangier, Ibn Battiittah was naturally struck 
 by the name and scanned his face eagerly. After they had 
 been talking awhile, the visitor said, ‘‘ You seem to be looking 
 at me as though youknewme.”’ ‘‘ From what country do you 
 come ?’’ asked Ibn Battiitah. ‘‘ From Ceuta.’? ‘And lam 
 from Tangier,’’ replied the traveller, and they wept together 
 at the thought of this strange meeting at the other end of 
 the world, so far from their distant home in the West. After 
 some further conversation Ibn Battitah realized that they 
 had met before in India, in the capital, Delhi, which 
 Qiwam ud-Din had visited as a young man with his uncle, 
 a Spanish Muhammadan. The Sultan of Delhi had tried 
 to induce the young man to settle in India, but he refused 
 to stay as he had set his heart on visiting China ; and there 
 he soon acquired a high position and considerable wealth. 
 Some years later, after his return home, Ibn Battitah started 
 off to explore Central Africa and met a brother of this same 
 man in a town in the Western Sudan.! Ibn Battiitah quite 
 naturally remarks on the enormous distance that separated 
 these two brothers from one another. This incident is 
 characteristic of Muhammadan society during the Middle 
 Ages ; it reveals the enterprise that merchants and travellers 
 showed in journeying such enormous distances, and the 
 facilities which their co-religionists provided for those who 
 braved the perils of such arduous journeys. 
 
 1 Ibn Battitah, ed. Defrémery and Sanguinetti (Paris, 1858), iv, 
 pp. 281-2. 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 91 
 
 Under such circumstances it is not surprising to find 
 that there is a very considerable mass of geographical literature 
 in the Arabic languages. The earliest examples of it derive 
 their origin from the administrative necessities connected 
 with the vast empire over which the Caliphs held sway. In 
 order that there might be rapid communication between the 
 capital and the outlying provinces, an elaborate system of 
 posts was kept up ; at intervals of every few miles there was a 
 postal station where the official messenger could get a fresh 
 relay of horses, or pass on his despatch to another member 
 of the same service ; and for the benefit of such messengers, 
 and for the passage of troops, a network of roads was kept 
 in good order so as to render possible rapid transit from one 
 administrative centre or one strategic point to another. 
 This postal system was one of the many administrative 
 arrangements that the new Arab Government took over 
 from the Roman Empire whose provinces on the southern 
 and eastern shores of the Mediterranean it had annexed. 
 The very Arabic word for this postal system bartd derived 
 from the late Latin word for a post-horse, veredus, is an 
 abiding acknowledgment of this indebtedness. At present 
 we are concerned with it only in its connexion with the growth 
 of geographical literature in the Arabic language, for we possess 
 some of the handbooks in which a list of the postal stations 
 was set down with the distances between each, a description 
 of the principal routes and of the taxes levied 1 in the various 
 provinces they traversed. 
 
 Besides this feature of the administrative organization 
 of the Arab Empire, there was another circumstance—in 
 this instance connected with the religion of the conquerors— 
 that served to stimulate interest in geography and to induce 
 many persons to undertake lengthy journeys. This was the 
 pilgrimage. Among the duties incumbent upon every Muslim, 
 provided only that he had health and sufficient money for 
 the expenses of the journey, was that of making the pilgrimage 
 to Mecca once at least in his lifetime. Consequently 
 throughout the whole of the Muhammadan era, except on the 
 few occasions when political disturbance has prevented, 
 there has been a stream of pilgrims setting their faces towards 
 the Holy City in which their religion first had its origin, 
 from every part of the Muhammadan world—Egypt, Syria, 
 
92 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Mesopotamia, and Persia, the inhabitants of which enjoyed 
 a certain proximity to Arabia—but also from more distant 
 countries such as Turkistan, India, China, and the Malay 
 Archipelago in the east, and Spain, Morocco and the Sudan in 
 the west, the inhabitants of which had, in early times, to face 
 great risks and undergo much toil and trouble in order to 
 attain the fulfilment of their pious aim. Religion thus came 
 in to stir up any latent desire there might be for travel, 
 and that to a still greater extent than was the case in medieval 
 Christendom, because the Muhammadan pilgrimage to Mecca 
 was not regarded, as was the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 
 Christendom, as an exceptional experience in the life of the 
 devout believer, for it was one of the five pillars of the 
 practical observance of the faith of Islam, and though 
 theologians recognized circumstances that absolved the 
 faithful from the fulfilment of this pious duty, so that it was 
 not an act of universal obligation, still in practice these 
 indulgences have been disregarded by thousands of devout 
 persons who have undertaken the journey BONS all obstacles 
 of age, poverty and ill-health. 
 
 There is still a third circumstance that stimulated travelling 
 in the Muhammadan world—one common to almost every 
 community in the world—and that is commerce. In 
 Muhammadan society the merchant enjoys a respect and 
 consideration that is closely connected with the origin of his 
 faith ; for Muhammad, the Prophet, the founder of Islam, 
 had been himself a merchant, and thus conferred upon the 
 profession of the trader an elevation and a dignity which has 
 gained for him an entrance into the highest society. Several 
 sayings traditionally ascribed to the Prophet assigned an 
 honourable position to the merchant in the Muslim hierarchy, 
 e.g. “In the Day of Judgment the honest truthful Muslim 
 merchant will take rank with the martyrs of the faith’’,? 
 and in another tradition the Prophet says that the truthful 
 merchant will sit under the shadow of the throne of God on the 
 Day of Judgment.?, The Prophet commends the merchants to 
 his successors, for “ they are the couriers of the world and the 
 trusty servants of God upon earth”. Consequently, trade has 
 
 1 Kanz al-‘Ummal (Haydarabad, A.H. 1312-15), 1, No. 4084. 
 
 2 Ibid., No. 4086. 
 $ Ibid., No. 4112. 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 93 
 
 never implied any disparagement in Muhammadan eyes, for 
 are not the market-places the table of God and whosoever 
 comes to them partakes thereof? The greatest of the early 
 Caliphs, ‘Umar, said, ‘‘ There is no place where I would be 
 more gladly overtaken by death than in the market-place, 
 buying and selling for my family.’’! This same great ruler 
 is reported to have set honesty in the commercial life above 
 the punctual fulfilment of religious duties, as a test of the 
 worth and excellence of a man. There was a case brought 
 before him in which it was of importance to decide whether 
 confidence could be placed in the testimony of a certain 
 witness, and before ‘Umar would allow the man to bear 
 testimony, he said ‘‘ Bring me a man who knows you’’. So 
 the witness brought forward a friend, who vouched for the 
 excellence of his character. But ‘Umar asked, ‘‘Are you 
 his near neighbour? Do you know his goings out and 
 comingsin?’’ ‘‘No,” he replied. Then ‘Umar asked again, 
 ‘* Have you been his companion on a journey so as to have 
 had opportunities of recognizing his true character ?”’ Again 
 the answer was “‘No’’. Then ‘Umar asked, ‘‘ Have you done ° 
 business with him, for it is when money passes from hand to 
 hand that the true piety of a man is learned?’’ Again the 
 answer was ‘‘No’’. ‘‘Then I presume you have seen him 
 standing in the mosque, repeating the Qur’4an and bowing 
 down in prayer.’’ This time theanswer was ‘‘ Yes’’; whereupon 
 ‘Umar drove the man away, saying, ‘‘ You know him not,”’ 
 and turning to the witness said, ‘‘ Bring me a man who really 
 knows you, for trading is the true test of a man, and it is in 
 the operations of trade that his piety and religious worth 
 become known.” 2 It is in the same spirit that one of the 
 greatest thinkers of the Muhammadan world, Ghazali, who 
 flourished towards the end of the eleventh century, draws 
 a picture of the ideal merchant : he must begin his business 
 with a pure intention, be content with gains that can be got 
 by lawful methods, and spend these gains on his family and 
 pious purposes ; justice and benevolence are to be the guiding 
 principles of his commercial activity, and in the market he 
 must promote righteousness and check iniquity. He must 
 not come into the market full of greed, and should leave it 
 
 1 Al-Ghazali, Ihya al-‘Ulam (Cairo, A.H. 1289), ll, p. 53, 20. 
 8 LG. as Da 
 
94 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 when he has gained sufficient profit for his wants. He must 
 not neglect the market of the next world, i.e. the mosque, for 
 the market of this life, and in all his actions he must observe 
 the prescriptions of the religious law, remembering that he 
 has to give account of his doings in the Day of Judgment. 
 Into all the details of this picture it is impossible to enter here, 
 but it is of significance as having been drawn by one of the 
 greatest theologians that the Muslim world has produced 
 and as implying the expectation that the trader would serve 
 as an exemplar of the devout life, and would be a model of 
 righteousness for others to follow. 
 
 So much for the ideal presentation of the Muhammadan 
 merchant. As for the actual business with which he was 
 concerned, a manual for traders,? composed possibly about 
 the same period as that of Ghazali—though the exact date 
 is uncertain—gives us a list of the various articles in which 
 the medieval trader was interested. First come precious 
 stones—pearls, diamonds, turquoise, cornelian, onyx, coral, 
 etc. —then scents, such as musk, amber, camphor, sandalwood, 
 and cloves. The best amber comes from south-east Arabia, 
 the next best from Spain or Morocco; the best aloes come from 
 India. These geographical references show how wide the 
 medieval merchant threw his net. Of spices there is naturally 
 a long list : pepper and cinnamon and ginger and many others. 
 Paper was an important object of commerce ; the best kind 
 is described as heavy, well polished, pleasant to the touch, 
 and free from worm holes, which can be prevented by means 
 of a species of Indian mint. Many kinds of silk and woollen 
 stuffs, furs and carpets are mentioned, and then follows a 
 large group of metals ; iron, copper, lead, tin, etc., and another 
 group of various articles of food. Of any one of these various 
 articles it would be possible to speak in detail, but for 
 our consideration here I will select only furs and skins. 
 
 Unexpected evidence as tothe extent of the fur trade between 
 Muhammadan countries and the north of Europe before the 
 beginning of the eleventh century, had been obtained from 
 the enormous finds of Muhammadan coins in various parts 
 of northern Europe, especially on the shores of the Baltic. 
 These coins were obtained from Muhammadan traders in 
 
 1 Tbid., ii, pp. 73-5. 
 2 Kitab al-ishavati ila mahasint ’t-tijava (Cairo, A.H. 1318). 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 = 95 
 
 exchange for skins and furs, and some estimate may be formed 
 of the development which this trade attained from the fact 
 that upwards of ten millions of suchcoins have been discovered, 
 and even these do not represent the total number once in 
 circulation, because there is direct evidence that in some 
 instances thediscoverers of a hoard of precious coins have melted 
 them down, and such destruction has doubtless happened 
 in cases that have escaped record. As many as ten or twelve 
 thousand of such coins have been found in a single locality, 
 and in Sweden alone there is a record of such finds in as many 
 as 169 different places.1 How far north the Muhammadans 
 went in search of furs it is difficult to determine, but the 
 observation made by an Arab geographer that, at one of the 
 emporia in which the Muhammadan traders purchased these 
 wares, the night was shorter than an hour shows that some 
 of them at least must have journeyed a very considerable 
 distance to the north of their native country.? 
 
 Such trade was of course carried on by land, but equally 
 adventurous was the sea traffic, and there are some manuals 
 for mariners that have come down to us, dealing especially 
 with the Red Sea, and the journey thence to the Persian 
 Gulf, to India, and to China. The author of one of these 
 handbooks for pilots tells us that his father and grandfather 
 had both been pilots on the Red Sea, and that after he had 
 himself gained experience for forty years he embodied in 
 his book what he had learnt from them, as well as the fruit 
 of his own experience.? It was such bold seamen as these 
 who brought back the stories which we find in the later 
 compilations upon geography, and their adventures served as 
 the basis for the well known story of Sindbad the Sazlor. 
 Much that they reported we know now to be true, such as the 
 waterspouts that endangered the safety of their frail vessels, 
 the flying fish, and other marvels, that seemed incredible 
 to some of their contemporaries ; but many of their stories 
 were obviously exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or sheer 
 inventions of a lively fancy. The compiler had no means of 
 testing the accuracy of such reports: even what we now 
 
 2 Cf. Chapter IV. 
 
 2 Georg Jacob, Der nordisch-baltische Handel dev Avaberim Mittelalter 
 (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 26, 40, 122. 
 
 3 Ibn Majid, Instructions nautiques et voutiers arabes des XV et 
 XV Ié¢ siécles, ed. G. Ferrand (Paris, 1921). 
 
96 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 know to have been entirely false probably did not appear 
 to him more marvellous than some of the narrations that were 
 really based on accurate observation ; and though he sets it 
 all down, he cannot from time to time refrain from an expression 
 of mild scepticism in the phrase, ‘‘But God knows best.’ } 
 Still, apart from the audacious mendacity and the romantic 
 picturesqueness of some of these stories, we cannot but admire 
 the splendid courage and intrepidity of these Muhammadan 
 seamen who set out on such perilous enterprises. 
 
 These sea captains in the Middle Ages not only possessed 
 a very considerable knowledge of the art of navigation, but 
 they had a high ideal of the responsibilities attached to their 
 profession. One of the earliest of such collections of mariners’ 
 tales that has come down to us from the tenth century gives 
 us some little insight into the character of these sea captains, 
 in the record of a conversation that one of them had with a 
 terrified passenger, who for three nights and days had suffered 
 agonies during a violent tempest. ‘*‘ You must know,”’ he 
 said, ‘‘that travellers and merchants have to put up with 
 terrible dangers, compared with which these experiences are 
 pleasant and agreeable; but we who are members of the 
 company of pilots are under oath and covenant not to let a 
 vessel perish so long as there is anything left of it and the 
 decree of fate has not fallen upon it; we who belong to the 
 company of ships’ pilots never go on board a vessel without 
 linking our own life and fate to it; so long as it is safe, we 
 live ; but if it perishes, we die with it ; so have patience and 
 commend yourself to the Lord of the wind and of the sea, 
 who disposes of men’s lives as He will.” 2 
 
 Let us now turn to the scientific writers on geography, 
 who pursued their investigations on rigid lines of scientific 
 inquiry, in several instances undertaking extensive journeys 
 and collecting materials on the spot. The number of such 
 Arab geographers is so extensive that it is only possible here to 
 refer to a few of them. One of the most remarkable of them, 
 of whose personality we know something from the account 
 that he himself has given of the labours he underwent in 
 compiling his book, is al-Mugaddasi. Born in Jerusalem 
 about the middle of the tenth century, he spent twenty 
 
 1 Cf. Chapter VIII, p. 160. 
 * Buzurj b. Shahriyar, ‘Aja@’ib al-Hind, ed. P. A. Van der Lith. 
 (Leiden, 1883), p. 22. 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 97 
 
 years in travelling throughout the various Muslim dominions 
 of his time, for, unlike other geographers of a later date, he 
 made no attempt to describe the countries of the unbelievers. 
 He speaks slightingly of the work of some of his predecessors 
 as being based upon mere hearsay ; he himself took infinite 
 pains to obtain in each locality accurate information as to the. 
 climate, the products, the state of trade, the coinage, weights 
 and measures, and the general characteristics of the inhabit- 
 ants. He mixed with persons of every class, and tells 
 us how he had audience with princes and mixed familiarly 
 with the great, while at other times he had to gain a scanty 
 livelihood by hawking in the bazaar, or make his living by 
 bookbinding. Sometimes he could afford to ride or be carried 
 in a palanquin, at other time he had to tramp on foot in the 
 blazing sun or in the snow. His caravan was plundered 
 again and again by highway robbers, and once he nearly lost 
 his life by drowning. He was thrown into prison as a spy, 
 was falsely accused of heresy, suffered shame and humiliation 
 of all kinds, and had many unpleasant encounters with 
 highwaymen and cut-purses. He never actually had to beg 
 his bread, but he must often have come near to being reduced 
 to such an extremity. He supped with Sufis, and shared 
 the scanty meal of ascetics. He led the public worship 
 in the mosque, preached from the pulpit, and gave the call 
 to prayer from the minaret. He watched the Byzantine 
 galleys engaged in asea fight, and attached himself to military 
 expeditions to other frontiers. During these _ travels 
 al-Mugaddisi tells us that he received as many as thirty 
 different designations, such as pilgrim, ascetic, reciter of the 
 Qur’an, teacher, lawyer, merchant, bookbinder, paper-maker, 
 doctor, messenger, and the like.1_ The book he produced, 
 ranks as one of the most accurate descriptions of the 
 territories of Islam during the Middle Ages, and in spite of the 
 long account that al-Muqaddisi gives of himself and of his 
 efforts to secure accuracy, he modestly disclaims any 
 assumption of completeness, and frankly says that he does not 
 consider his book to be above criticism or free from possible 
 error. But whatever defects there may be in his work, 
 they are certainly not due to any failure on the part of the 
 
 1 Ahsan al-taqasim, ed. De Goeje, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1906), pp. 43-5. 
 H 
 
98 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 author to make every effort within his power to obtain the 
 fullest and most trustworthy information. 
 
 About two centuries later, another great geographer, 
 Yaqit, who died in the first half of the thirteenth century, 
 was likewise an energetic traveller. His parents were 
 Greeks, but while he was still a little boy he was carried off 
 as a Slave and sold to a merchant in Baghdad. His master 
 gave him a careful education and sent him on long journeys 
 connected with his business. In this way Yaqit acquired 
 an extensive knowledge of various parts of the Muhammadan 
 world, and he continued his journeys even after the death of his 
 patron. His chief work is a great Geographical Dictionary, 
 largely compiled from the writings of earlier geographers, but 
 enriched by materials he had himself collected during his 
 travels. Mugaddisi and Yaqit may be taken as good 
 examples of the Arab geographers who approached the subject 
 of their study from a scientific point of view, and composed 
 works aiming at a certain degree of completeness. 
 
 To a different category belong the travellers whose 
 purpose was to leave behind an account of their own 
 personal experiences. Of these we may select for consider- 
 ation two only: Ibn Jubayr in the twelfth century and 
 Ibn Battitah in the fourteenth. Ibn Jubayr was a 
 Spaniard who, after a successful career as a_ student, 
 was appointed secretary to the then Prince of Granada. 
 One day his master gave him a cup of wine, bidding 
 him drink it. “I never drink wine,” replied Ibn Jubayr. 
 ‘““By Allah, you are going to drink it now and seven 
 times over,’ and the unfortunate secretary dared protest 
 no longer, but after he had drunk the seven cups the Prince 
 gave them to him again, this time full of gold. When Ibn 
 Jubayr returned to his home he made a vow that he would 
 spend the money upon making the pilgrimage to Mecca in 
 order to atone for his involuntary breach of the religious law. 
 Of this journey, which lasted for two years, from 1183 to 1185, 
 he wrote a full account, of great interest from many points of 
 view ; all the observances of the pilgrimage to Mecca at that 
 period are minutely described, the measurements of the 
 sacred buildings are given in detail, and they serve as valuable 
 material for comparison with present conditions. 
 
 Saladin was at that time engaged in his struggle with the 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS a4.p. 1000-1500 = 99 
 
 Crusaders, and Ibn Jubayr frequently mentions his great 
 contemporary with enthusiastic admiration. When he 
 describes the pilgrims in prayer around the Ka‘bah, he makes 
 reference to the profound emotion that stirred the vast 
 congregation when prayers were offered for this great 
 champion of the faith: ‘*‘ At the name of Saladin all tongues 
 quivered as they cried ‘Amen’, for when God loveth one of 
 His servants, He inspires the love of him in the hearts of 
 men.’ Such an enthusiasm did he feel for his hero that when 
 the news arrived of Saladin’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, 
 it stirred Ibn Jubayr to undertake this long journey to the 
 East once more, though at the time, when there was so much 
 hostility between Christians and Muslims, a journey from 
 one end of the Mediterranean to another was not without 
 peril of its own. One of the most interesting parts of Ibn 
 Jubayr’s travels is the account he gives of the condition 
 of the Muhammadan population under Christian rule in 
 Sicily. William II was reigning at Palermo when he reached 
 that island, and Sicily had been for about a century under the 
 rule of the Norman kings. Though the Muslims seemed 
 to have lived in some apprehension, and to have practised 
 the religious observances of their faith to some extent in 
 secret, the king appears to have treated them with much 
 consideration and to have employed many Muhammadans 
 about his person, and given them positions of responsibility 
 as ministers and chamberlains. His chief cook, too, was a 
 Muhammadan, and he had also a Muhammadan bodyguard. 
 There were so many Muhammadan maidservants in the 
 palace that Ibn Jubayr was assured by one of the officials 
 that they had succeeded in converting to Islam the Christian 
 women there. William II himself could both read and write 
 Arabic, and the superscription on royal documents was 
 written in the same language. 
 
 The other traveller, Ibn Battiitah, to whom attention may 
 be drawn, was a man of quite a different type. Ibn Jubayr 
 had been a true scholar, exact, even meticulous, a close 
 observer, with a sound judgment of men and manners ; 
 his elegant and attractive style, together with the justness 
 of his descriptions, caused late writers to incorporate whole 
 
 1 Travels of Ibn Jubayr, ed. W. Wright and M. J. De Goeje (London, 
 1907), PP. 97, 325. 
 
100 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 passages of his narrative into their own works often without 
 acknowledgment. On the other hand, Ibn Battiitah did 
 not himself write the work that passes under his name, 
 for it was taken down from dictation and embellished by 
 one of the secretaries of his master, the Sultan of Fez. He 
 is certainly at times guilty of inaccuracies, and his account 
 of China, in particular, is so confused that some of his critics 
 have doubted whether he ever went there at all; others, 
 on the contrary, in spite of these faults, have strongly upheld 
 his general veracity. His narrative is lively and often 
 entertaining, and reveals him as a man of restless energy 
 and curiosity, clearsightedness, and a determination to enjoy 
 life; at the same time he was a devout observer of the 
 practices of his religion, with a particular devotion for the 
 saints. His travels extended over a period of twenty-eight 
 years ; starting from his home in Tangier, he made his way 
 across the north of Africa to Egypt, then spent several years 
 in visiting various Muhammadan  countries—Palestine, 
 Syria, Arabia, Persia; after living for three years in Mecca 
 he went to Aden and travelled down the east coast of Africa 
 to Quiloa ; having got so far south, he made his way north 
 till he reached the Crimea, and went as far up the Volga 
 as he could in the hope of seeing what he called ‘‘ the land of 
 darkness”’. After a visit to Constantinople, where he received 
 as kindly a welcome from the Christian Emperor as he 
 was accustomed to receive from Muhammadan princes, he 
 returned to the Crimea, and turning east made his way 
 through Khwarizm, Bukhara, Turkistan, and Afghanistan 
 into India, where he remained for about eight years in the 
 service of the Sultan of Delhi. In a.p. 1342 he attached him- 
 self to an embassy that was being sent to the Emperor of 
 China ; but the vessel carrying the envoy and the presents 
 was wrecked off the coast of Malabar, and Ibn Battiitah, after 
 some unpleasant adventures, went to the Maldive Islands, 
 where he held the post of a judge for a year and a half. 
 Thence, after a visit to Ceylon, he went by way of Bengal 
 and the Malay Archipelago to China. From China he 
 returned to his native country in 1349, after an absence of 
 twenty-four years. Still he was not satisfied, but soon 
 started off again on a visit to Spain, and later into Central 
 Africa, where he visited Timbuktu and sailed up the Niger, 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS 4.p. 1000-1500 101 
 
 returning through the Sahara to Fez. According to one 
 computation, his wanderings had extended over a length of 
 75,000 miles. 
 
 This chapter may conclude with two extracts from Ibn 
 Battiitah’s travels as typical of the risks this adventurous 
 traveller had to run. The first is his account of the 
 departure from Calicut of the embassy intended for China. 
 The Zamorin of Calicut had fitted out for the use of this 
 embassy one of a fleet of thirteen Chinese junks that were 
 then in the harbour. Ibn Battiitah said to the captain, 
 a day before the vessel was to sail, ‘*‘ I want a cabin to myself, 
 because of the slave girls that are travelling with me.” The 
 captain replied, ‘“* The Chinese merchants have taken return 
 tickets and have occupied all the cabins, but my son-in-law 
 has one which I can let you have; it has no bathroom, 
 but you may be able to exchange it for another during 
 the voyage.’ Accordingly Ibn Battiitah had his luggage 
 taken on board and made his slaves embark. This was on 
 a Thursday ; he himself remained on land so as to take part 
 in the Friday prayer. Early on the Friday morning one 
 of his servants came to tell him that the cabin they had got 
 was very uncomfortable and small. So he spoke to the 
 captain about it, who said, ‘I can’t help it, but if you care 
 to go on board one of the smaller vessels you will find plenty 
 of cabins to choose from.” So the change was made, and 
 all his goods and slaves were transferred to the other ship 
 before the Friday prayer began. But in the afternoon 
 the sea became very rough; all the other vessels had started 
 except three—the junk carrying the presents for the Emperor 
 of China, another whose owners intended to spend the winter 
 on the Malabar coast, and Ibn Battiitah’s little vessel. 
 ‘**T had to sleep on shore that night with nothing but a rug 
 to lie on, as I could not get on board the vessel, nor could 
 those in it come to me.” By Saturday morning the three 
 vessels had been carried far out to sea; one of them was 
 dashed to pieces on the rocks and only a few of the passengers 
 escaped with their lives. One of the merchants who was 
 saved had with him a slave girl who clung on to a board at 
 the stern of the junk. The merchant offered a reward of 
 ten pieces of gold to anyone who would rescue her, and one 
 of the sailors—a man from Hormuz—succeeded in bringing 
 
102 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 her safe to land ; but he refused the proffered reward, saying, 
 ‘‘T did it only for the sake of God.”” Thesame night the vessel 
 with the presents was thrown up on shore and all the 
 passengers drowned, and Ibn Battiitah had the melancholy 
 task of burying the members of the embassy with whom he 
 had left Delhi and reciting over them the prayers for the dead. 
 Ibn Battiitah’s vessel got safely away to sea and he heard 
 no news of it, until some months later he fell in with two 
 of his missing slaves, who told him that all his belongings 
 were scattered, without chance of recovery. For some time 
 he debated in his mind whether or not he should return to 
 Delhi and inform the Sultan of the fate of the embassy, 
 but he wisely decided against running the risk of putting 
 himself again in the power of this irascible monarch. But 
 he was much perplexed, and spent the greater part of his 
 time in the mosque reading the Qur’an ; at first he read it all 
 through once a day, but later read the whole of the sacred 
 volume through twice each day, and so he continued for three 
 months. Finally he made his way to the Maldive Islands 
 where he was invested with the office of judge, already 
 referred to.} 
 
 The other extract is interesting as showing the kind of 
 misapprehension that might give rise to some of the marvellous 
 stories the Muhammadan travellers related on their return 
 home. Ibn Battiitah tells how he was caught in the monsoon 
 somewhere in the China or Java Sea; for forty-two days his 
 vessel was driven by the storm, till the sailors lost their 
 reckoning and had no idea of where they were ; the rain fell 
 in torrents and for ten whole days they could not see the sun. 
 Very early one morning the clouds lifted, and twenty miles 
 off they sighted a mountain rising out of the sea, and the 
 wind carried them rapidly towards it. The sailors were 
 terrified, saying, ‘‘We are nowhere near dry land and we 
 know of no mountain in this sea ; if the wind dashes us against 
 it, we are all lost men.’”? Then all those on board humbled 
 themselves before God and renewed their vows of repentance, 
 offered fervent supplications to Allah, and sought the 
 intercession of the Prophet. The merchants vowed to 
 bestow alms in abundance, and Ibn Battiitah wrote their 
 vows down for them in a note-book. The wind dropped 
 
 1 Op. cit., iv, pp. 94-6, 105. 
 
ARAB TRAVELLERS a.p. 1000-1500 103 
 
 a little, and when the sun rose they saw the mountain high 
 up in the air, with clear sky between it and the sea. All the 
 passengers were amazed ; but Ibn Battiitah noticed that the 
 sailors were weeping and bidding one another farewell; 
 and when he asked them what was the matter, they replied, 
 ‘“What we thought was a mountain, is a roc; if it catch 
 sight of us it will certainly destroy us.’’? It was then less 
 than ten miles off from them. But by the grace of God, a 
 favourable wind arose and carried them in the opposite 
 direction; so they saw no more of the roc, and had no 
 opportunity of finding out its real shape. 
 
 1 Ibid., iv, pp. 305-6. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 TRADE AND COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 
 A.D. 800-1200 
 
 By BARON A. MEYENDORFF 
 
 Es an earlier chapter the most prominent features of 
 
 travel in the Dark Ages, the Christian pilgrimages, 
 were considered down to about the end of the eighth century 
 and we then turned to consider two special aspects of the 
 succeeding period, the travels of the Vikings and the Arabs. 
 Our last chapter carried us right down to the end of the 
 Middle Ages, and we must now return to examine another 
 aspect of travel at the beginning of the ninth century. The 
 main motive of the travellers whose narratives have come 
 down to us from the period a.p. 800-1200 is still, as before, 
 that of pilgrimage. 
 
 Two quotations from the oldest monument of Russian 
 travels '—the pilgrimage of the Abbot Daniel of Kiev to the 
 Holy Land about 1106-7 will suffice to illustrate this 
 and also both the moral and national assets of European 
 development still prevailing, or at least surviving, in our 
 times. ‘Many virtuous people,’ so we read in the introduction 
 of the narrative, ‘ practising good works and charity to the 
 poor, reach the holy places without leaving their homes... . 
 
 Others ... after having visited them... boast as if 
 they had done something meritorious and thus lose the 
 fruit of their labour...’ A_ still more fervent feeling 
 
 of national consciousness, at a time when no political unity 
 existed among the Russian people, strikes our ear when 
 we read the following words addressed by the Abbot Daniel 
 to Prince Baldwin: ‘ My prince... for the love of God 
 and out of regard for the Russian Princes ... allow me 
 to place my lamps on the Holy Sepulchre in the name of the 
 whole land of Russia.’ . . . And what a joy when the 
 
 1 Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, London, 1897, vol. iv, C. R. 
 
 Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, and R. Histor. Soc. Transactions, 
 vol. xiv. 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 105 
 
 lamps of the Russians kindled and the miracle of the fire from 
 Heaven had thus been accomplished, whereas the lamps 
 placed by the Latins did not shine. The satisfaction which 
 this neglect of the Latin worshippers on the part of the 
 Divine Power caused to our abbot indicates clearly enough 
 another momentous element, that of religious rivalry, which 
 tends to prove more resistent against the action of time than 
 anything else in the East of Europe to-day. 
 
 Besides the travels of the pilgrims, the Vikings, and the 
 Arabs in our period, there were two other types of travellers 
 who added considerably to the knowledge of the world among 
 the Western peoples, namely the Jews, among whom Benjamin 
 of Tudela? may be considered the most prominent, and the 
 German merchants and warriors in the Baltic,? a category 
 of travellers which is not mentioned in Professor C. R. 
 Beazley’s Dawn of Modern Geography, otherwise so rich in 
 information and so stimulating for further research. 
 
 Alongside them we may place the narratives of diplomatic 
 missions such as the two missions of Luitprand to Byzantium 
 in A.D. 957 and A.D. 968, the early commercial enterprises of 
 the Frisian, Italian and German towns. Our attention 
 here will be mainly directed to an examination of the bases 
 of our knowledge of the east of Europe. 
 
 The beginning of our period, as Marquardt puts it in his 
 East European and East Asiatic Rambles,® referring to the 
 ninth and tenth centuries, coincides with the formation 
 of the ethnological body of Europe. The modern independence 
 of the minor nationalities, like the Finns, Esthonians, 
 Letts and Lithuanians, and the aggrandisement of territory 
 allotted to some others were not only due to their demands 
 for national emancipation from alien rule but also to a doctrine 
 of restoration of the ethnological border supposed to comprise 
 a homogeneous racial organization. Hence the specific 
 form of East European land reform, dispossessing or despoiling 
 the racial or legal successors of the conquering minorities. 
 
 1 The latest English version from a thirteenth century MS. by M.N. 
 Adler, London, 1907. 
 
 * The famous edition of the Origines Livoniae sacrae et civilis seu 
 Chronicon Livonicum vetus was dedicated by J. D. Gruber (1740) to 
 George II with reference to his ancestor: NHenrici Leonis, Slavorum 
 domitoris. 
 
 ® Osteuropaeische und Ostasiatische Streifzuge. 
 
106 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 The latter were sometimes the representatives and often 
 the unpleasant agents of the two universal principles of the 
 European community, the Empire and the Papacy, of which 
 the latter has remained an important component of Kuropean 
 civilization. The beginning of modern Europe has been traced 
 back to the partition of Verdun, A.D. 843, to the progress 
 of the Christian missions, to the competing influence of the 
 Muhammadan culture, to the zenith of Scandinavian activity — 
 exploring, raiding, conquering, colonizing—to the decisive 
 breach between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church, 
 to the new national formations in the East, including the 
 political growth of various principalities and towns in the 
 Russian plain. Such were the features of the ninth century, 
 followed by some symptoms of fresh life in nationality, 
 language, literature, Christian philosophy, Christian political 
 ambition, and the commercial expansion of the Italian 
 cities. Towards the end of our period the Christian world 
 of Europe was chequered with disaster. The destruction 
 of the Levantine outposts of Latin Christendom, the paralysis 
 of the Byzantine power, the Mongol rule in Asia and all over 
 the Russian plain were already imminent (1240). Itis difficult 
 to find a clue among the vague and confused movements 
 of these obscure centuries, and the historian often tries to 
 operate with a very few general and preconceived assumptions 
 derived from his own experience and immediate observation. 
 Thus Heyd, the historian of the trade of the time, makes the 
 rather surprising assumption that the Jews during the 
 internecine wars among the Christians, were circulating 
 freely amid the warring peoples without arousing suspicion 
 and were consequently making large profits.1_ This estimate 
 of the advantages of the almost extra-territorial position 
 of the Jew, Heyd derives apparently from his observation 
 of modern, even of very recent and apparently temporary 
 and sporadic conditions of toleration. Again in another 
 instance Professor Golubinsky, who ranks first among the 
 historians of the Russian Church, examines the narrative 
 of the Russian Chronicle, known as the Chronicle of Nestor, 
 showing the Kiev Prince Vladimir making his choice from 
 among the various teachings of the Christian Churches and 
 giving the preference to the Greek or Byzantine Rite, adopting 
 
 1 W. Heyd, Histoive du Commerce du Levant, i, 125. 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 107 
 
 the same method of competitive examination (A.D. 988) 
 as the Prince of the Khozars some time earlier is reported 
 to have followed in selecting the Hebrew doctrine. Itis not the 
 composite origin of the Chronicle with its multifarious layers 
 of various authorship and age, nor the two centuries which 
 separate the supposed author of the Chronicle from the event 
 described, nor the fact that the earliest existing MS. belongs 
 to the year 1377, that determines the more critical attitude 
 adopted by Professor Golubinsky towards the relevant tale, 
 as compared with many of his predecessors, among whom he 
 mentions Professor Soloviev. It is the assumption of the 
 universal and permanent value of a psychological observation 
 which he thus raises to the level of a psychological law. 
 Professor Golubinsky understands that the human mind 
 does not admit of a vacuum, that therefore Prince Vladimir 
 must have given up his heathen faith before the new concepts 
 could have penetrated into his mind. Hence, the picture 
 of a detached selective process being excluded, the whole 
 story must be discarded as psychologically improbable. We 
 see here how the real and deep learning of a first class 
 historian is dependent upon the assumption of an untrained 
 psychologist, and it is the latter which in the given case 
 conducts and supervises the historical research, though it is 
 outside our present scope to examine the validity of the 
 psychological law referred to by Golubinsky.' 
 
 In dealing with a period so obscure as the one here treated 
 and one concerning which our information is so scattered, 
 it is essential for us to avoid as far as possible the use of 
 preconceived assumptions and the reading back of modern 
 conditions into medieval times. We certainly distinguish 
 between economic, political, and military activities in our 
 modern definitions of human conduct, but as we actually 
 meet them in the practice of the Middle Ages, those branches 
 may occasionally blend, or combine, or replace one another 
 in a remarkable manner, so as to give rise to varieties 
 intermediate between those which are commonly regarded as 
 typical, when we say ‘ travel’, ‘trade’, ‘war’. It might sound 
 paradoxical, but we are almost led to assume that in the 
 
 1 In his work on Canonization (Moscow, 1903) Golubinsky bases his 
 negative attitude on another psychological fact, namely that at the age 
 of 30 men of excessive sensuality ‘ do not come to repentance ’. 
 
108 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Middle Ages between A.D. 800 and 1200 peace and war were 
 undifferentiated. 
 
 The common basis of travel and intercourse is the road 
 or route ; the mere existence of a route as a fairly constant 
 or permanent link between distant parts of the inhabited 
 globe is an important indication of a complex social, economic 
 and political system, the expression of varied supra-tribal 
 interests and of an extensive interdependence between 
 groups scattered over large sections of the known world. 
 The Roman Empire was one of such systems, and the roads 
 were one of its expressions. 
 
 The first question which arises is that of the Roman trade 
 routes. Which of them survived down to our period, which 
 were the new routes corresponding to the regrouping of the 
 populations, connecting the new and old centres of civilization 
 and maintaining the exchange of goods? This exchange 
 had already become an essential of social life in the countries 
 surrounding the Mediterranean and large tracts of the 
 Hinterland with its developed provincial life ? After the fall 
 of the Empire we still hear of trade in skins, hides, wool, 
 leather, feathers, whalebone, honey, wax, timber, ships, 
 various kinds of textiles as linen, muslin, silk, brocades, dye 
 stuffs like purple, scents, ornaments, glassware, pearls, precious 
 stones, metal goods, arms, coins, and last, but not least, 
 foodstuffs, fish, oil, spices, cereals (which require special 
 attention as to their mode of distribution), beverages (wine, 
 beer, spirits), earthenware. 
 
 This list of commodities covers a great part of the goods 
 mentioned incidentally in narratives of medieval travel. 
 It would be interesting to draw up a list comprising the sources 
 whence the goods were drawn, their destination, and the route 
 which they are reported to have followed. This would help 
 us to understand the commercial geography of our period, 
 and would indicate the changes caused by political events 
 bringing about the breakdown of one trade route and the 
 formation of new ones, just as it was in our days with 
 regard to the countries engaged in the great war, when the 
 one main requisite of the trade route, the security of traffic, 
 could not be maintained, or when the communication ceased 
 to be possible owing to internal disorder. Thus cotton- 
 growing Turkestan reverted after 1917 to wheat cultivation. 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 109 
 
 Spruner and Menke in their Atlas of Medieval Geography 
 (1880) have tried to project on their maps among other 
 information relating to ethnology, political boundaries, etc., 
 indications relating to the routes found in medieval 
 sources and compiled by the respective experts. On one 
 of their maps (pl. 63) under the heading ‘The States and 
 Travels of the Northmen’ (Staaten und Fahrten der 
 Normannen) we see a yellow line running from Gothland to 
 the estuary of the Neva and Lake Ladoga, thence southward 
 across the Russian plain as far as Cherson, and from 
 Cherson across the Black Sea direct to Constantinople. 
 Westward from Gothland a line shows the overland and sea 
 communication to the Mediterranean centres and thence to 
 Constantinople, thus completing the circular route. This 
 circular route at different points on the Atlantic in Spain, 
 at Venice and Genoa, at Constantinople, on the Dnieper 
 from Bolgar on the Volga through Novgorod, is connected 
 with the routes coming from Baghdad, the principal city 
 trading eastward with India and China. What was the 
 meaning of this colossal network? To what extent would 
 it be an instrument of world trade and world travel under 
 the conditions of universal warfare, prevailing between 
 800-1200 especially in the Eastern half of Europe? It 
 is striking that there existed a comparatively wide knowledge 
 of the possibility of a circular travel route from Constanti- 
 nople through Russia,! Scandinavia, around Western Europe or 
 by land to Rome and back to the point of departure, without 
 it being practicable to traverse it otherwise than by means 
 of a military expedition. 
 
 The only mention of any one having attempted the route 
 we find, if we are not mistaken, in the Russian Chronicle 
 referring to the Apostle Andrew’s journey from Cherson to 
 Rome ‘where he told about the wonders observed on his way 
 through the Russian lands and the steam baths delighted 
 in by the natives’. The chronicle asserts the existence of the 
 route as a means of communication and intercourse and 
 gives for our epoch a number of instances as to the use of the 
 section between Scandinavia and Constantinople favoured by 
 Varangian commercial and military enterprise, a section of 
 
 1 Professor M. I. Rostovtsev lifts the veil from an obscure past in his 
 Ivanians and Greeks in South Russia (Oxford Press), 1922. 
 
110 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 intermittent land and water traffic of necessarily limited 
 tonnage, demanding more than one season, complicated means 
 of transport, boat building and package, and victualling, 
 especially for the slaves who were one of the most important 
 commodities transported. The trade has not yet been 
 sufficiently analysed on the basis of Byzantine and Russian 
 sources. The Scandinavian sources apparently speak more 
 of the glory of their kimsmen on the Austrweger, the Eastway, 
 than of the actual practicability of the route across the 
 Russian plain, which had probably been as well, if not better, 
 exploited by the Greeks before the Christian era. Adam of 
 Bremen had only a vague notion of the possibility of getting 
 from Scandinavia to Constantinople and he did not know 
 that it involved river navigation. He calls Kiev the finest 
 jewel of Greece, thus mixing the Scandinavian term for 
 Russia, Gardarika (the country of the towns), with Grikland.* 
 Only one Scandinavian merchant can be named at 
 Constantinople about the year 1000. The Emperor 
 Constantine VII’s? description of the visit annually paid to 
 the port of Constantinople by the Russo-Varangian Princes 
 and their hosts deserves to be quoted. The goods brought 
 to Constantinople must have been chiefly res sese moventes, 
 to use the term of the Roman law, namely slaves, and in 
 addition some wax and furs such as later reached Venice. 
 Everything was collected at home as tribute during the 
 previous season. The goods must have been in a poor 
 condition owing to their transport in canoes, povdévda, 
 probably simply trunks hollowed by fire, unless the martial 
 tradesmen helped themselves to better vessels such as 
 those owned by the Greeks of Cherson and arrived before 
 Constantinople as a threatening fleet, though as a rule they 
 reached only Mesembria. This commerce and the description 
 of the Russian invasions a century earlier in the ornamented 
 homilies of the Patriarch Photius (A.D. 865) certainly do not 
 impress the reader as a manifestation of international trade. 
 The Eastern section of the great circular route turns into a 
 comparatively secondary, almost local, approach to the 
 luxuries of the East by rather primitive savages who provide 
 chiefly slaves, probably an illgotten gain, to the more advanced 
 
 1 Heyd, op. cit., pp. 73 and 77. 
 2 A.D. QII-59. 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 111 
 
 Kasterners through the Greeks as middlemen. The Arabs 
 also were then manifesting their high business morality in 
 this branch of commerce. The Russo-Byzantine treaties 
 of 907, 911, 945 and 971, mentioned by the Russian chronicle, 
 of which three are indirectly referred to and even those 
 unacknowledged. as treaties by the Byzantine sources, 
 have until late served to represent the Russian trader in 
 a more cultured attitude. The description of the Russian 
 Prince Svyatoslav on the Danube near Dorystolon (modern 
 Silistria), A.D. 972, gives a vivid picture of the primitive 
 chieftain and his army of 22,000 men, each of whom received 
 one pediuvos (nearly 12 gallons) of wheat for victuals 
 on their return homeward. At the same time a special 
 mention is made of maintaining the ancient ‘friendly’ 
 trade relations with Constantinople. 
 
 The Byzantine-Scandinavo-Russian road shows a series 
 of phenomena where invasion alternates with trade in rapid 
 succession. The irregularities and risks were obviously 
 considerable. The development of Greek influence in Kiev, 
 crowned in A.D. 988 by the triumph of the Greek Christian 
 mission, nevertheless gave to this centre the _ brilliant 
 appearance of an important and rich town, where according 
 to a German description (in the chronicle of Thitmarus, 
 Bishop of Magdeburg, referring to the year 4a.D. 1018), forty 
 churches, eight market places, and a multitude of fugitive 
 slaves and ‘ Dani veloces’ were equally striking. And, in 
 the north, Novgorod gains already the social characteristics 
 of a commercial commonwealth, later affiliated to the German 
 Hansa. Let us add to these few points the Arab trade along 
 the Volga to the town of Bolgar? where the traders from 
 Novgorod are met, if they have not been down the river as 
 far as Itil, the capital of the Khozars, near the Caspian Sea, and 
 we get a puzzling picture of contradictory elements standing 
 for what may be called travel and travellers, but fluctuating 
 from piracy, pillage and invasion, conquest, military 
 
 1 Professor V. I. Sergeyevich, Lectures and Researches (St. Peters- 
 burg, 1910, p. 627), writes: The Byzantine sources ignore the four 
 treaties mentioned by the Russian chronicle. 
 
 2 J. Marquardt has recently tried to discover new indications for 
 the location of this and other places along the Volga route. Ungarische 
 
 Jahrbicher, pp. 261-334, December, 1924, Ein Arabischer Bericht 
 uber die arktischen (uralischen) Laender aus dem X Jhdt. 
 
112 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 organization, tribute and tax collecting to trade and 
 missionary work. 
 
 The circular road with its subsidiaries—White Sea-Volga, 
 Novgorod-Volga_ (Bolgar), Novgorod-Dnieper— does not 
 appear, as has been too readily assumed by some writers, 
 to be the economic breathing canal of Europe ; it appears as 
 an aggregate of independent sectors of unequal importance 
 with occasional intermittent intercommunication leading 
 to the exchange of goods from one end of the road to the 
 other only through a succession of semi-fiscal and semi- 
 military commercial acts. The finds of Arabic coins in 
 the North of Europe, without very clear evidence of a 
 corresponding delivery of goods by these countries to the 
 middlemen dealing with the Arabs, does not indicate what 
 we call trade in the usual sense; nor are we certain that the 
 Scandinavians, even the Swedes who according to Adam 
 of Bremen (A.D. 1076) were rich in cereals and honey, 
 were really exporting any goods that after a succession of 
 exchanges could bring wealth to Constantinople. 
 
 The trading capacities of the Scandinavians at this early 
 date are hard to credit, and indeed according to the Norwegian 
 scholar, Dr. A. Bugge, his countrymen were nothing but 
 seafaring agriculturists in constant need of cereals. The 
 only regular export from Sweden was the fighting host, 
 which until the ninth century levied blackmail from 
 Novgorod. Probably this tribute was paid in Arabic 
 coins and local furs, hides, tools, and other goods of the 
 kind which in the fifteenth century formed the peasants’ 
 dues! in that part of Northern Russia, as the contemporary 
 surveys show. 
 
 The political adjustment along the Eastern as well as 
 along the Western half of the circular road was obviously 
 lagging behind the economic needs to such a degree that the 
 latter either became extinct or had to find new routes of 
 communication. Of these the Western Dvina route became an 
 important trunk road at the close of our period. The 
 more ambitious Eastern seaway of the late sixteenth century, 
 from England to the White Sea and thence to the Caspian, 
 
 1 Sergeyevich in vol. iii of his Russian Antiquities (St. Petersburg, 
 1911), p. 108. C. Brinkmann, Die Aeliesten Grundbucher von Novgorod, 
 in Vierteljahrsschrift fur Soc. u. Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1911. 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 113 
 
 which had only a shortlived importance, will give us an 
 adequate: idea of the importance in trade and politics of 
 the river routes, for a long time the only means by which 
 the inner parts of a continent were accessible from outside. 
 
 Going back to the crucial question of the meaning of the 
 colossal network of assumed trade routes, we must refer 
 to the appreciation of its value by the Belgian historian, 
 Professor Pirenne. His main proposition is based upon 
 the assumption that some economic interdependence of 
 nations still survived at the fall of the Roman Empire. 
 Marseilles, Professor Pirenne states, maintained its position 
 as a port long after the Germanicinvasion. The latest written 
 papyrus which has been identified comes from A.D. 787, 
 and this date corresponds to the period of the hostile Arab 
 rule on the southern shores of the Mediterranean extending 
 from Syria to Spain. The golden coin solidus aureus obtained 
 from Byzantium still continues to circulate as a currency 
 in the West between the eighth and ninth centuries but is 
 tending to disappear. Islam having blocked the western part 
 of the Mediterranean in the seventh and eighth centuries, the 
 European continent is bound to rely for its requirements 
 from Constantinople and the East in general upon two lines 
 of communications only. ‘The one passes through the Levant 
 from Venice to Constantinople, the other from Flanders via 
 Russia down the Dnieper to Constantinople, or down the 
 Volga to Baghdad. At the same time Professor Pirenne 
 does not surprise us when he stresses with insistence the 
 fact that external trade was less important than under 
 the Roman Empire, so that the towns of Gaul fell into 
 decay, while international trade was hampered by strict 
 regulations in accordance with the requirements of the self- 
 supporting natural economy of the rural estate, which then 
 became the main organization of production. What there 
 could be of external trade was due to the achievements 
 of the martial adventurers who, like St. Godric, were breaking 
 the rules in a spirit of freedom and risk, until international 
 commerce was later captured by the large trading communities, 
 such as Venice, Pisa and Genoa. But this process was already 
 
 1 The lectures delivered by Professor Pirenne at University College, 
 
 London, have since been published in book form—Medieval Cities : 
 Their Origin and the Revival of Tvade (Oxford Press, 1925). 
 
 I 
 
114 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 beginning during our period, though it was subject to many 
 irregularities and accidents, forming, as we believe, the 
 very essence of medieval travel in the broadest sense of 
 the word. 
 
 Before we attempt to trace its articulation, which 
 indicates the movements of the growing organization of 
 travel, let us contrast the above sketch with the generally 
 accepted view.t The Eastern part of the circular route is 
 treated thus: ‘‘Northmen of Denmark and Norway were the 
 terror of all the coasts of Europe, and established themselves 
 in England and Ireland, in France and Sicily. From the 
 eighth to the eleventh century a commercial route from India 
 passed through Kharism and Novgorod to the Baltic, and 
 immense quantities of Arabian coins have been found in 
 Sweden, and particularly in the island of Gothland, and are 
 preserved at Stockholm.” The wording of a more recent 
 passage on the Northmen sounds less confident. ‘‘ The 
 coins .. . prove how closely the enterprise of Northmen and 
 of the Arabs intertwined.” The expression ‘enterprise’ 
 seems an especially happy one for its vagueness. To 
 characterize the predominant view one could quote popular 
 textbooks on history with passages such as this:,‘ What 
 do you bring us?’ the merchant is asked, in an old English 
 dialogue. ‘I bring skins, silks, costly gems and gold,’ he 
 answers, ‘ besides garments, pigments, wine, oil and ivory, 
 with brass and copper, and tin, silver and gold, and such 
 like.’ We are unable to check the exact value of the old 
 English dialogue. 
 
 Let us remember that the Northern shore of the Black Sea 
 was successively occupied by more or less ephemeral nomads : 
 Goths, Avars, Turks, Uzes, Huns, Bulgars, Pechenegs, the 
 tolerant Khozars and Kumans, this list being probably in- 
 complete, while Bosphoros or Panticapeum (modern Kerch), 
 Olbia (on the mouth of the Bug), Odessos (near the present 
 Varna), Cherson (the Russian Sebastopol), called by the 
 Russian Chronicles Korsun, perpetuated the memory of the 
 past and retained to the end of the twelfth century the aspect 
 of Greek settlements. Trade had to accommodate itself to the 
 
 i Such a view is shortly expressed in the article ‘‘ Geography ”’ in 
 
 the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ed. 1897, and may be compared with the 
 edition of 1910, vol. xi. 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 115 
 
 respective conditions of domination or subjection among the 
 intermediate tribes in the historical mosaic of races along the 
 trade route converging to the Black Sea or to the Caspian, and to 
 their material culture, which was conditioned by slave raiding, 
 hunting in general, and agriculture. The following utterance 
 taken from the Russian Chronicle! throws a sidelight on the 
 situation. The young Prince Svyatoslav, the same whom 
 Leo Diaconus described, declares to his mother and the 
 host, ‘I do not like to stay in Kiev; I want to live at 
 Pereyaslav 2 on the Danube, because that is the centre of 
 my land, as all goods go there: from Greece gold, brocade, 
 wine, and various fruits or spices; from the land of the Czechs 
 and Hungarians silver and horses; from Rus hides, wax, 
 honey, and slaves.’ These words suggest a special aspect 
 of trade, perhaps its utilization as a basis for raising toll. 
 Svyatoslav apparently intended to secure various advantages 
 by his subsequent nefarious expedition, to which reference 
 has already been made. During the retreat he was captured 
 with his army and put to death by the Pechenegs 
 (Patzinaciti), who controlled a part of the trade route and 
 who acted either under dictation from Byzantium in return 
 for advantages amounting to a tribute paid to them, or at 
 their own discretion. 
 
 There is just one more trait which is at first sight surprising 
 in the Russian Chronicle. Describing the military expedition 
 of Prince Oleg (A.D. 907), the semi-legendary basis of Russian 
 claims on Constantinople, the writer speaks with disgust 
 of the sufferings inflicted upon the Greek population, saying 
 ‘and many other things did the Rus, as warriors usually 
 (or often) do’. A tribute is exacted from the Byzantines 
 amounting to 12 grivna per head, and in each of the 2,000 
 ships there were 40 men, for later the Chronicle speaks of 
 forty oars. Furthermore the expedition returns with new 
 sails, bread, wine, meat, fish, spices and anchors. This booty, 
 should the text stand the test, serves as an indication of 
 the goods appreciated by the invaders. The goods mentioned 
 are not fit for further exportation to the North; on the 
 
 1 Laurentian MS. a. 6477. 
 2 Formerly called Martianopolis, the modern village Preslava on 
 the right bank of the St. George arm of the Danube. 
 
116 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 contrary all were for immediate consumption or use. A 
 handful of precious stones, some yards of silk or brocade, 
 would not alter the position substantially; the expedition 
 would still not indicate a commercial war. This throws a 
 light on the value of the great route to Scandinavia as a 
 commercial thoroughfare and would appear to show that its 
 value has been much exaggerated. 
 
 The northern portion of the route was controlled by the 
 Norsemen, to whom Novgorod then paid a tribute in order to 
 secure peace. The Arabs knew the lower Volga only and 
 nothing beyond the town of Bolgar. It might be noticed here 
 that Professor C. R. Beazley, describing the trade between 
 Russia and Constantinople as barter, enumerates as Greek 
 export goods : silks, stuffs, gold, wine, and fruit which were 
 exchanged for Russian furs, honey, wax, corn and slaves. 
 The corn item seems exceedingly dubious, for about a 
 thousand years had passed since the Black Sea had been 
 bordered by wheat-growing districts,! and Russian agriculture 
 was yet in its infancy. Oleg’s booty, supposing that the whole 
 passage is among those parts of the Chronicle which may be 
 admitted as a true record, is the more suggestive as this 
 same Prince Oleg, when taking possession of Kiev, was 
 admitted into the town as a ‘merchant’. This would mean 
 that there were traders along the Dnieper River eager to 
 secure the right to pass through the various territories, 
 which were under the control of several conflicting powers ; 
 but this is but slight evidence as to trade relations between 
 Constantinople and Scandinavia. We can glean here and 
 there an indication of the nature of the protection of river 
 traffic in this remote past. The Russian Chronicle 2 mentions 
 an expedition of the Kiev Prince Mstislav to protect against 
 the pillaging Polvtsy the trade route used by Greek merchants 
 for the supply of salt and another commodity, the nature 
 of which the unintelligible term zalozhny (the merchant 
 being called zalozhnik) does not disclose to us. It may be 
 assumed that this trade was a dutiable occupation and hence 
 
 1 Max Ebert, Sudrussland in Altertum, Bonn, 1921. J. W. Pratt on 
 A. M. Shepard’s Sea Power in Ancient History, Boston, 1924, and 
 Rostovtsey, op. cit. 
 
 * For the year A.M. 6675, i.e. A.D. 1165-6. 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 117 
 
 was protected by the respective territorial authorities 
 interested in the gathering of the toll. 
 
 With regard to the eastern part of the circular route, 1.e. 
 the route across Russia, during the period covering the 
 eighth to the twelfth centuries, one may say on behalf of Central 
 and Western Europe that the remote parts of the East 
 had no direct commerce with Europe,! but only through 
 many intermediaries at a costly rate and with infinite 
 risk from pirates and enemies, and the trade there was 
 to a great extent dependent on booty. 
 
 Let us try to understand the connexion and _ transitions 
 from booty through tribute to trade and travel. It might be 
 reasonable to assume that at the beginning of our period 
 the force which actuated the removal of individuals and 
 groups beyond the region of settlement was chiefly the 
 necessity or desire to acquire goods by force, or in return 
 for goods and services rendered. The cynic might add 
 that commercial and military enterprise are fused almost more 
 intimately than in our days. The evolution thus to our 
 days would be: from war to trade and from trade back to 
 war. From the eighth to the twelfth century we can find 
 distinct traces of the formation of a trading class, and travel 
 becomes chiefly an accompaniment of commerce. The evolution 
 of the Arabs and Northmen from pirates into traders was 
 observed long since at a time when the encouragement 
 of trade became a principle of politics. 
 
 The mere spoliation of the invaded country may contain a 
 variety of economic phenomena and does not exclude acts 
 of generosity. The consequences of the act of depredation 
 depend upon the nature of the goods seized, such as land, slaves, 
 women, foodstuffs, etc. Some require a more permanent 
 cultivation like cereals, others maintenance like slaves; 
 compulsory Jabour requires organization and a number 
 of objects that presuppose the existence of artisans 
 producing arms and tools, ornaments, textiles, and furs. 
 The accumulation of the booty by the individual 
 
 1 See expressions found in an early seventeenth century document 
 published by Mme. Lubimenko in The English Historical Review, 1914. 
 A Project for the Acquisition of Russia by James I in 1612, a striking 
 illustration of the organization of trade through foreign lands along a 
 river system from the White Sea to the Caspian. 
 
 2 A. L. Schlozer, History of Commerce, 1761. 
 
118 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 invader and its appropriation are different from the 
 accumulation under a chief or a constituted authority, 
 and so is the subsequent complicated rationing of the output 
 or result of the expedition. In case of seizure of specie 
 (coins, metal, and other mediums of exchange), especially 
 if it has been designed, individual smuggling and hoarding 
 is made easier, and this might serve as a fund for trade ; 
 rationing will be laborious, it will be difficult to counter open 
 or latent resistence by ‘ vested interests’. Accidental or 
 casual yield, correlated with the respective forms of social 
 and political organization, with a distributive authority of 
 some sort even in the occupation of new land, may and will 
 tend, together with the preparing of a periodical or frequent 
 repetition of the same expedition, to secure a permanent or 
 recurrent yield by means of the application of more 
 sophisticated forms of ransom and probably later tribute. 
 The organization of the entrepreneur or aggressor adjusts 
 itself to needs of production. The exaction of a permanent 
 tribute and its distribution is an exceedingly complicated 
 economic task, as could be illustrated by the only 
 communistie state we know, where there is a main source 
 of provision. 
 
 The periodical raising of a tribute in kind, which was 
 apparently peculiar to the Mongol rule in Russia, presupposes 
 together with the organization of pressure, if not the 
 organization at least the toleration and growth of crafts 
 among the tributary population. The beginnings of our 
 period are rich in instances of more or less organized annual 
 tributes and ransom. Novgorod paid annually till the tenth 
 century 300 grivny tribute to the Varangians to have peace. 
 Svyatoslav in A.D. 901 exacted ransoms.2 The various 
 
 1 Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, ii, 291 and 323. Those who 
 resisted were made slaves, individually or the whole family, or the 
 women only—we do not know. Nor do we know anything about the 
 fate of the slaves “were they sold in their native land or exported ? 
 These and similar questions arise when the Mongol rule is to be con- 
 sidered. In Professor Vinogradov’s Outline of Historical Jurisprudence, 
 i, 259, he contrasts slavery in Muhammadan countries with primitive 
 agricultural slavery and serfdom. 
 
 * Professor Klyuchevsky remarks that the names of the traders 
 mentioned in the Russo-Byzantine trade agreements are the names of 
 the agents of the Kiev prince. They are received as allies, not as traders 
 (Kurs, i, 173, 4th Russ. ed.). 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 119 
 
 northern neighbours of the Byzantine Empire obtained 
 a fairly regular income by blackmail, fluctuating between 
 tribute for keeping quiet and ‘ wages’ for troubling some 
 third party. 
 
 Among the various kinds of tribute we can distinguish 
 the fluctuating tribute casually obtained by the Rus from 
 the neighbouring Baltic tribes from the fixed and almost 
 assessed tribute such as is mentioned in the interesting 
 passage referring to Ohthere’s tale to King Alfred (about 
 A.D. 890): ‘‘ The principal wealth of the people of Helgaland 
 consists in the tribute the Fynnes pay them . . . skins 
 of wild beasts, feathers of birds, whalebones, cables, and 
 tacklings for shippes made of whales’ or seales’ skinnes. 
 Every man payeth according to his ability. The richest pay 
 ordinarily 15 cases of Marterns, 5 Rane deere skinnes and 
 one beare, ten bushels of feathers, a coat of a beare’s skinne, 
 two cables three score elles long a piece, the one made of 
 whales’ skin the other of seale’s.””! Another instance of 
 assessed tribute we find in the Russian Chronicle. The 
 Khozars claim a sword from each Polyan hearth and are 
 frightened as by a bad omen when they get swords with 
 double-edged blades. The dues payable for free passage 
 are also a kind of tribute more or less regulated, stipulated, 
 or exacted ad hoc. It was the favourite profit of the nomads 
 threatening the communication between Kiev and 
 Constantinople. 
 
 It seems clear that the regular booty and more so the 
 tribute presupposes the organization of forces (hosts) and, 
 if permanently arranged, the security of production. The 
 oppressors often have to become organizers of supply, and 
 the consent or submission of the subject races becomes 
 an important element of stability.2 The organizing capacity 
 of the masters is one of the requirements of progress which 
 it is most difficult to appreciate correctly. A rationalistic 
 interpretation of history will simply reject it as a stage of 
 unjustifiable oppression. One of the transitory stages 
 
 1 Hakluyt, ed. 1903, pp. II-I4. 
 
 2 Th. Talbot, The Manorial Roll of the Isle of Man, 1511-15. ‘ At 
 the end of the eighth century the Scandinavian conquerors imposed 
 
 upon the Celtic population a new division of land into six shedyngs 
 or ship districts.’ 
 
120 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 from tribute to trade is the farming out of the tribute. As 
 the tax farmer works for the ruling power and commerce 
 appears as a subsidiary branch in the tax collector’s enterprise, 
 the system is the reverse of the military slave-hunting 
 organization, where the ruling power works for private, 
 mostly foreign, traders. This latter institution was still 
 surviving, and perhaps even developing, at the beginning 
 of our period, whereas the farming out of tribute and taxation 
 belongs to a later time, reviving very ancient devices of 
 administration. An unlimited exploitation appears only 
 possible if there is no escape for the tributary tribe. The 
 taxation of hunting tribes or individual hunters will 
 necessarily be closely related with some form of trading and 
 consent, because a regular return is only obtainable when the 
 hunters have food and equipment. Ohthere’s tale ought to be 
 examined from this point of view. The comparatively 
 rapid Slavicization of the Swedes who controlled the Russian 
 tribes and the survival of the national assemblies may have 
 something to do with that type of taxation. Here then 
 trade and primarily barter appear as a semi-private under- 
 taking. The tribute collector might in some respect act 
 as a publicanus or tribute farmer, with public authority and 
 responsibility backed by his national organization, or else 
 he merges with the tributary community and becomes 
 one of its chiefs and organizers. This kind of transformation 
 appears in the political career of the Scandinavian (Varangian) 
 Princes on Russian soil. Under such conditions tribute, 
 trade, and truce are interwoven with travel and exploration. 
 The increase of output, the discovery of shorter and less 
 endangered communications and means of transport are 
 more a matter for political than private concern. Our modern ™ 
 terminology is hardly fitted to represent the state of things we 
 find described in the Byzantine or Russian sources. 
 
 A succession of trade agreements was required to secure 
 the conditions of transit, the remedies against injuries and 
 damage, the protection of the trade route and of the traders 
 and foreigners in general along the line leading from Gothland 
 to Novgorod,! from Cherson to the Danube, from the Danube 
 
 1 Professor C. R. Beazley in his introduction to Professor Nevill 
 Forbes’s translation of the Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471 (London, 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 121 
 
 to Mesembria, the final port for the Russian ‘ vessels’, 
 according to Constantine VII, and from Mesembria for the 130 
 miles to Constantinople. 
 
 There was the same pressing need in the case of the still 
 longer line leading from Novgorod to the Caspian, or from 
 Novgorod to the estuary of the Western Dvina, where 
 Riga was gradually becoming an important centre. The 
 sources from which we derive our scanty knowledge refer to 
 fragments of those large and ambitious schemes of trade 
 organization which haunted the peoples of the day but which 
 hardly formed anything but shortlived,incomplete settlements. 
 When the ports only, without the hinterland, were occupied 
 by foreigners, we have perhaps the least oppressive form of 
 obtaining goods, as long as the goods are being brought to 
 the ports instead of being fetched and collected by the 
 occupant of the port. From this initial period down to the 
 formation of large territorial Empires one can hardly expect 
 the travellers of the time to be much concerned with the 
 advance of geographical knowledge. 
 
 During our period there seems to have been a queer 
 coexistence of general and vague notions of the possible 
 lines of communication with very remote countries, together 
 with legendary information slavishly repeated by generations 
 of authors without any attempt to check the fateful traditions 
 by contemporary experience. If Adam of Bremen and the 
 Russian Chronicler at Kiev, who were presumably closely 
 contemporary, both repeat the same details about the 
 Amazones in what is now Finland, and if the same tale is 
 told two centuries earlier by the Byzantine, Georgius 
 Amartolus, who in his turn has borrowed it from older 
 sources, such survival of legend seems to confirm that there 
 was very little travel indeed in the time when they were 
 writing. The maps of so late a period as the sixteenth 
 century bear similar evidence of the very slow advance of 
 geographical knowledge. If among the _ geographical 
 tradition there were surviving indications of routes between 
 the remotest parts of the world, this tends to show and to 
 1914), gives a summary of the growth of the Republic, its empire, and 
 its foreign relations. L. K. Goetz, Deutsch-Russische Handelsvertraege 
 
 des Muttelalters, Hamburg, 1916, is also an important contribution 
 for the non-Russian student of Russian history. 
 
122 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 confirm what recent writers seem to assume, namely the 
 frequentation of such routes at a much earlier date when there 
 was apparently more trade and travel and less fighting. 
 The renaissance of the routes was not accomplished during 
 the period under consideration. This general view however 
 ought not to obscure certain features of international life 
 even during the dark ages. These features are especially 
 fascinating amidst the general insecurity. The hostage 
 in enemy’s land, the intermarriage between the reigning 
 princely families, the diplomatic negotiation, the hired 
 warrior from foreign land, offer so many occasions for mutual 
 observations of intense interest to the widely differing 
 Christian and non-Christian peoples. 
 
 The religious, non-political and non-material travel—the 
 pilgrimage, with its spirit of otherworldliness, adds a peculiar 
 charm to the epoch by the very contrast with its roughness. 
 The immense variety of types, races and degrees of culture, 
 to be overshadowed by a few, possibly by one system of 
 religious and political thought, manifests perhaps for the first 
 time the common basis of a still latent humanism, but still 
 a mere dream, at the very eve of its failure. 
 
 The conflux of people of various nationality at Alexandria, 
 Baghdad, Damascus, in the Italian cities Amalfi, Genoa, 
 Venice, at Constantinople, in comparatively out of the way 
 places like Kiev, Novgorod, Wisby, at Itil and Bolgar on 
 the Volga, at Prague and Ratisbon (Regensburg) on the 
 Danube, and Jumna on the Oder, seems to indicate a 
 considerable intensity of international life between the eighth 
 and the twelfth centuries. This is, as it were, confirmed by 
 the growing uniformity of international religious life, in 
 the vast domains of the Patriarchate of the Western and 
 Eastern Churches, and in the territories gained by Islam, 
 as well as by the variety of countries where the Jews were 
 domiciled. Does the difficulty resolve itself into the 
 coexistence of a small number of world-centres keeping 
 up the intercommunion of races inherited from the Roman 
 Empire, some vanishing while new ones take their place, 
 whereas the numbers of people engaged in this international 
 life and the intensity of this life were very much on the ebb ? 
 Is not Constantinople during our period more remote from 
 
COMMUNICATION IN EASTERN EUROPE 123 
 
 Western Europe than in Roman times? Is there not a 
 disruption of the forces which tend towards a renewed 
 unity and fail because the international communion has no 
 actual basis; the political disruption is too great, the religious 
 unity not sufficient to restore the pax Romana, the process 
 of consolidation of the larger nationalities too slow to facilitate 
 travel and restore to the travellers the prominence which they 
 once possessed and which is reserved to them in a later age. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE LAND ROUTES TO CATHAY 
 By EILEEN Power, M.A., D.Lit. 
 
 Ape century lying between 1245 and 1345 is of unique 
 importance in the history of medieval travel, because 
 for a brief period it brought into contact the East and the 
 West, the two centres of the civilized world ; for during the 
 Middle Ages it is true enough to say that the world had two 
 centres, each of which thought that it was the only one, 
 the great civilizations of India and China, proud and 
 immemorially old, and the budding civilization of 
 Christendom, then in all the vigour of its lusty youth. 
 
 In a sense, of course, they had always been in contact. 
 Once before they had met and mingled, when Alexander 
 took his Hellenism westward and left an ineffaceable mark 
 upon the faces of the Buddhas of Northern India. Once 
 again they had, as it were, looked at each other without 
 meeting, when Chinese traders met the agents of Rome at 
 the craggy city of Tashkurgan, called ‘the Stone Tower ’, 
 and unrolled their bales of silk on the banks of the Yarkand 
 River.t And although all this had become a fairy tale to the 
 men of the Middle Ages, they were still in contact with the 
 Kast in the sense that they seasoned their dishes with spices 
 from Ceylon and Java, set diamonds from Golconda in 
 their rings, and carpets from Persia on their thrones, went 
 splendidly clad in silks from China and played their 
 interminable games of chess with ebony chessmen from 
 
 1 See M. B. Charlesworth, The Tvade Routes of the Roman Empire 
 (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 99-109. ‘ Here, indeed, these merchants, 
 though they little knew it, stood at what is the very head and centre of 
 all commerce for the Old World and the most ancient meeting-place 
 on the whole earth; at this lonely point three civilizations, those of 
 China, of India, and of the Hellenized Orient, met and gave in exchange 
 their products, their wares, and their painting and art.’ But Sir Aurel 
 
 Stein places ‘the Stone Tower’ at Daraut-Kurgan in the Karategin 
 valley. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 125 
 
 Siam. But for all that a black and heavy curtain shut the 
 East and the West from each other’s sight. 
 
 For although the thriving merchants of Venice and Genoa 
 and Pisa grew rich upon the Eastern trade, they knew it 
 only at its termini, the ports of the Levant. From China and 
 India merchandise could take two roads to the West. One 
 was a land route across Central Asia, ending upon the shores 
 of the Black Sea, or passing southward to Baghdad. But 
 though the Greeks of Constantinople and Trebizond did an 
 active trade in Eastern merchandise coming by this route, 
 and though Italians were already beginning to frequent 
 the Black Sea ports, it was impossible for them to go further 
 along the trade routes, for all across Central Asia lay the 
 Turks, blocking the road to the East. The other road was a 
 sea road, separated from the Mediterranean by two land- 
 vestibules, the vestibule of Persia and Syria, and the vestibule 
 of Egypt. In Palestine and Syria the Christians still held a 
 remnant of the Crusading States, with a valuable row of ports, 
 and by treaty with the sultans at their backdoor they were 
 allowed to journey a few miles inland to the busy cities of 
 Aleppo and Damascus. But beyond this, to the great mart 
 of Baghdad, the centre for the whole district, and along the 
 trade routes to the Persian Gulf, they might not go. Here 
 again the Turks stood in their path. In Egypt, too, their 
 galleys came to Alexandria and did a great trade, but by 
 what road the camels brought their loads and where the 
 Nile boats took on board their cargoes, the Frankish merchants 
 did not know, for once more the Turks blocked them. 
 Islam, the hereditary foe of Christendom, lay like a wall 
 between Europe and all the trade routes to the East. 
 
 But in the period which we have now to consider all 
 this was changed. Italian merchants chaffered and Italian 
 friars said Mass in the ports and cities of India and China, 
 moved unhampered with their caravans on the great silk 
 route across Central Asia, or passed through Persia to take 
 ship on the long sea road. The East and the West for the 
 first time came into direct contact from end to end. And 
 if it be asked how this came about, the answer is an unexpected 
 one—that it was the result of the conquests of a nomadic 
 Mongol people from Central Asia of the same stock as the 
 Turks, a people, moreover, which has come down in history 
 
126 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 with a reputation for unintelligent destruction equalled 
 only by that of the Vandals. That people is best known 
 under its medieval name of the Tartars. 
 
 The Tartar conquests began at the beginning. of the 
 thirteenth century, when Chinghiz Khan and his hordes 
 came down from Mongolia and attacked the Chinese Empire, 
 taking Peking in 1214 and by degrees, in the course of the 
 next fifty years, extending their sway until they ruled almost 
 the whole of Eastern Asia. They first turned westward 
 in 1218 and the flood of conquest slowly spread right across 
 Asia, over a large part of Russia, into Poland and Hungary, 
 and all over Persia and part of Asia Minor, until by the 
 death of Mangu Khan in 1259 one empire stretched from 
 the Yellow River to the banks of the Danube, and from the 
 Persian Gulf to Siberia. Nothing like it had ever been known 
 in history before, for the Roman Empire was a mere midget 
 in comparison, and nothing like it was to be known again until 
 the great land empire of Russia in the nineteenth century. 
 In the last half of the thirteenth century it- broke up into 
 four khanates. The Great Khan himself ruled from Cambalue 
 or Khanbalik (Peking) over the whole of China, Corea, 
 Mongolia, Manchuria and Tibet, taking tribute also from 
 Indo-China, Burma and Java. The Chagatai Khanate, 
 with its capital at Almalik (Kulja), stretched over Central 
 Asia, Turkestan and Afghanistan. The Kipchak Khanate, 
 or the Golden Horde, with its capital at Sarai on the Volga, 
 covered the country north of the Caucasus, Russia, and part 
 of Siberia. The Persian Ilkhanate, with its capital at 
 Tauris (Tabriz) held sway over Persia, Georgia, Armenia, 
 and part of Asia Minor. Nevertheless, although thus divided, 
 the Tartars were essentially one people, acknowledging 
 the sway of the Great Khan at Peking and communicating 
 with each other by messengers across the length and breadth 
 of Asia. 
 
 The appearance of these wild horsemen, swift and savage 
 beyond description, coming like an irresistible flood, a sort 
 of terrible and overwhelming tidal wave, from the East at 
 first struck horror into the soul of Europe, for it seemed 
 as though they would continue their triumphant progress 
 westward and ravage all Christendom to the sea. Twice 
 they appeared, in 1222-3 and again in 1241. In 1288 Matthew 
 
 — 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 127 
 
 Paris tells how fear of them kept the people of Gothland 
 and Friesland away from the Yarmouth herring fishery, 
 and in 1241, when the Christian host. was heavily defeated 
 at Lignitz and they ravaged Poland, Silesia, and Hungary, 
 the Emperor Frederick II called upon Henry III of England 
 and other princes for common action against this new 
 ‘Scourge of God’.1 Horror and disgust and fear were the 
 sentiments which they aroused. 
 
 But after 1241 the flood of conquest rolled back, and when 
 next it rolled West again, it was seen to overwhelm not 
 Christian kingdoms but the caliphates of Baghdad and Syria, 
 establishing in the 50s Tartar for Muslim rule there, sacking 
 Baghdad and extinguishing the Caliphate in 1258. For this 
 reason this attitude of Europe began to undergo a change, 
 and men saw in the Tartars not a menace to Christendom - 
 but a possible ally against a common enemy. As Europeans 
 got to know more about the Tartars, they learned that they 
 were tolerant to all creeds, Buddhist, Muhammadan, Jewish 
 and Christian, having no very strongly marked beliefs 
 of their own. They began also to learn that there were 
 large groups of Nestorian Christians still scattered throughout 
 Asia. Europeans who visited the Tartar camp at Karakorum 
 brought back news of ladies of high rank, wives and mothers 
 of khans, who professed the Christian faith. Rumours 
 of the conversion now of the Great Khan himself in Cathay, 
 now of one or other of the lesser khans in Persia or Russia, 
 kept rising, and men repeated also the famous legend 
 of Prester John. All these things, together with the 
 indisputable fact that the Tartars had laid the Muslim power 
 low all over Asia, began to present them to Western rulers 
 in a totally new light. Gradually there took shape the 
 dream of converting the Tartars to Christianity and then 
 forming a great Tartar-Christian alliance which should 
 smite Islam hip and thigh, reconquer Palestine and Egypt, 
 and succeed where crusades from the West alone had failed. 
 
 From the middle of the thirteenth century, therefore, 
 
 1 He puts his trust in God and hopes that by the combined efforts of 
 Christendom these Tartars will be driven finally down to their Tartarus, 
 ad sua Tartava Tartan detvudentur. The pun was likewise perpetrated by 
 Matthew Paris, Innocent IV, and St. Louis! The Journey of Wiliam 
 of Rubruck, ed. W. W. Rockhill (Hakluyt Soc., 1900), p. xix. 
 
128 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 it is essential to remember that Europe was no _ longer 
 shrinking in terror from the Tartars, but on the contrary 
 was looking upon them as potential converts and _ allies. 
 Embassies were continually setting out to one or other of 
 the centres of their power, Sarai on the Volga, the new 
 Persian capital of Tabriz, or distant Cathay, from the Pope, 
 or the King of France, or the King of England, with invitations 
 to embrace Christianity and projects of alliance.1 Merchants 
 also began to go thither to trade and Franciscan friars to 
 preach, and by degrees a busy intercourse sprang up between 
 East and West.? But before describing this intercourse 
 at its height, some description must be given of the pioneers 
 of Eastward travel, the two friars who first made the 
 journey to Mongolia and brought back the first description 
 of Tartar power in Asia to Europe, and the greatest traveller 
 of all the Middle Ages, the merchant Marco Polo, who with 
 his father and uncle first reached Cathay itself, abode there 
 for eighteen years and finally came back to Europe by sea. 
 
 The first travellers of whom we have record were Franciscan 
 friars, sent on diplomatic missions to the Great Khan, the 
 one by Pope Innocent IV, the other by King Louis IX of 
 France. They came and went, and sojourned only long 
 enough to deliver their letters and receive the Great Khan’s 
 very haughty reply. But they are particularly interesting, 
 because they give a view of the manners and customs of 
 the Tartars at an early stage, and are the first Europeans 
 to make the land journey across the deserts and mountains 
 of Central Asia and the distant Mongolian plain. The first 
 to set out was John of Pian de Carpine, an Italian and 
 Provincial of the Franciscan Order at Cologne. He started 
 in 1245, and went by way of Bohemia, Silesia, and Kiev 
 to the Tartar horde on the Volga, and then, with a Polish 
 companion, on across Central Asia in the midst of hardships 
 so terrible that he afterwards died from their effects. He 
 
 1 One of the best statements of the scheme occurs in Marino Sanuto’s 
 Secreta (written 1306-7 and finally revised 1321). The conquest of the 
 Turks is to be carried out by the aid of the Tartars, beginning with 
 Egypt. He gives a sketch of the history and customs of the Tartars 
 and of European intercourse with them up to that date, and mentions 
 that many Christian traders have gone to the East by way of the Tartar 
 lands. 
 
 2 See C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Mod. Geog. (1906), iii, pp. 309-499. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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ROUTES TO CATHAY 129 
 
 was received by the Great Khan elect, Kuyuk, at a place 
 half a day’s journey from Karakorum in Mongolia, where a 
 host of Mongol notables and envoys had gathered for 
 the election, and returned with letters from ‘ Kuyuk, the 
 strength of God, God in Heaven and Kuyuk Khan on 
 earth, the seal of the Lord of all men’, reaching the papal 
 court in 1247. Imbued though he was with a profound 
 hatred for the Tartars, he was a remarkable observer, who 
 has left the best description of Tartar manners and customs 
 written in the Middle Ages, and an excellent account of the 
 ceremonies at the election of a great khan. 
 
 Meanwhile in 1248-9 a Mongol embassy came to St. Louis 
 of France, just when he was in the midst of a crusade at 
 Cyprus, from the Tartar general in Persia, offering alliance 
 against the Muslims. This stimulated the dispatch of an 
 unsuccessful mission under another friar, Andrew of 
 Longjumeau, to the same Khan whose election Pian de 
 Carpine had seen, but who died before it reached him, and 
 it was not until 1251 that there set out the second great 
 friar traveller of the Middle Ages, William of Rubruck, 
 a native of French Flanders, who carried letters from 
 St. Louis to the new Khan. He went by sea to the Crimea 
 and on to the Don and the Volga, and then pressed on across 
 Central Asia by forced marches which tried him terribly, 
 for he was very fat, often so hungry that he was reduced 
 to eating the biscuits which he had brought as a delicacy 
 for the Tartar nobles, and sometimes so cold that he had to 
 turn his sheepskin coat with the wool inside, and his bare 
 toes were frost bitten in their sandals. He leaves us a 
 very good account (addressed to St. Louis) of the Tartars, 
 with their cart-borne tents, their wandering herds, and their 
 
 _drink of kumiss, or fermented mares’ milk, for which he 
 conceived a liking, though among the Christians dwelling 
 with the Tartars it was held equivalent to a denial of their 
 faith to drink it. He gives a particularly graphic description 
 of the hordes of the Don and Volga on the move; and also 
 of the Court of Mangu Khan near Karakorum. Here he 
 
 1 For Pian de Carpine’s narrative of his journey and an account by 
 his companion, Benedict the Pole, see The Journey of William of 
 Rubruck ... with two accounts of the Earlier Journey of John of Pian de 
 Carpine, ed. W. W. Rockhill (Hakluyt Soc., 1900), pp. 1-39. 
 
 K 
 
130 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 met embassies from many parts and priests of all sorts of 
 religions—Catholics, Nestorians, Armenians, Manicheans, 
 Buddhists, and Muslims—-all disputing with each other 
 and all trying to establish their claims over the soul of the 
 Khan, who, like Gallio, cared for none of these things, but 
 made use of them as it suited him. * We Moal,’ said Mangu 
 to the friar, who spoke with him through an interpreter, 
 ‘believe that there is only one God, by whom we live and 
 by whom we die, and for whom we have an upright heart .. . 
 But as God gives us the different fingers of the hand, so 
 he gives to men divers ways. God gives you the Scriptures 
 and you Christians keep them not. You do not find in them, 
 for example, that one should find fault with another, do you ? ’ 
 ‘No, my lord,’ said William, *‘ but I told you from the first 
 
 that I did not want to wrangle withanyone.’ ‘Ido notintend 
 to say it for you,’ he said, ‘ Likewise you do not find that a 
 man should depart from justice for money.’ ‘No, my lord,’ 
 
 said William, * And truly I came not to these parts to obtain 
 money ; on the contrary I have refused what has been offered 
 me’; and a secretary present bore witness that he had refused 
 silver and silken cloths. ‘I do not say it for you,’ again 
 replied the Khan. ‘God gave you, therefore, the Scriptures 
 and you do not keep them. He gave us diviners, we do what 
 they tell us and we live in peace.’} If this was a barbarian 
 it was a barbarian of insight. 
 
 William’s own description of his difficulties with rival 
 Christians, such as the Armenian monk Sergius and the 
 Nestorians, somewhat bears out the Great Khan’s palpable 
 hit. Of the Nestorians, like all Christian travellers to the 
 Kast, he gives a very hostile account, on the principle, not 
 unfamiliar among some modern missionaries, that a heathen 
 is greatly to be preferred to a rival Christian sectary. His 
 story of the monk Sergius (who subsequently turned out 
 to be an impostor who had never taken orders at all, but was 
 a cloth weaver in his own country) is one of the most amusing 
 passages in medieval travel literature. This man was in 
 the habit of working miracles upon the persons of the Tartars, 
 by giving them draughts of holy water, in which he had placed 
 a little cross; previously, however, he took the precaution 
 
 1 Op. cit., pp. 235-6. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 131 
 
 of mixing a good dose of rhubarb with the holy water, the 
 effect of which was naturally regarded by the ignorant 
 Tartars as a great miracle. William, though shocked, 
 bore this without protest, until the monk happened to 
 visit one Master William Buchier, of Paris, a skilled goldsmith 
 who had been captured in the Hungarian raids and was 
 employed in various important works at Karakorum, and 
 who was then convalescing from a serious illness. Master 
 Buchier consumed two bowls of the concoction, thinking 
 it to be holy water, and it nearly killed him. This at last 
 moved William to protest. ‘ Either,’ said he to the monk, 
 * go as an apostle doing real miracles by the grace of the Word 
 and the Holy Ghost, or do as a physician in accordance with 
 the medical art. You give to drink to men not in a condition 
 for it a strong medicinal potion, as if it were something holy ; 
 and in so doing you would incur great shame should it 
 become known among men.’! Our good friar had plenty of 
 sense, but he lacked the instincts of the medical missionary. 
 
 William of Rubruck set out again for Europe in July, 1254, 
 leaving behind a companion, Bartholomew of Cremona, 
 to preach to the Tartars, and returned to the Volga and 
 then by way of the Caucasus and Armenia to Cyprus. He 
 is not only a very valuable writer from a geographical, 
 ethnological, and philological point of view (he picked up the 
 Mongol tongue and gives a good account of the languages 
 with which he met), but also a very entertaining one. Where 
 John of Pian de Carpine is impersonally accurate, William’s 
 personality emerges clearly from his narrative, which is full 
 of conversations and of those small intimate details which 
 make a story live. He deserves, indeed, to be more widely 
 popular than he is. 
 
 To these two friars belongs the imperishable glory of 
 pioneers, for they were the first Europeans to make the land 
 journey to Mongolia and return. But the next adventurers 
 of whom we know went further and saw and did far more, 
 and, by making the return journey by sea, encircled the 
 whole of the then known world. They were not friars 
 or ambassadors, but belonged to a class which was to provide 
 the main impetus to travel in the period which was now 
 opening, merchants going upon their own initiative and at 
 
 1 Ibid., pp. 192-3, 216. 
 
1382 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 their own cost and risk, moved by no motive save love of 
 adventure and that auri sacra fames to which in the history 
 of mankind it has so often been allied. Marco Polo was 
 incomparably the greatest traveller and the most magnificent 
 observer of the whole Middle Ages, shining among the others— 
 good as they are—like Apollo among the hinds of Admetus. 
 The story of the Polos is well known.1 About the same 
 time that William of Rubruck was setting forth on his 
 journey, two Venetian jewel merchants, Nicolo and Maffeo 
 Polo, trading to Constantinople, decided to take ship from 
 that city to the Crimea, where they had a counting house at 
 Soldaia (the modern Sudak), and to go on a trading expedition 
 to the Khan of the Golden Horde on the Volga. They 
 soon disposed of their jewels and spent a year at his camp, 
 and then war broke out between this Khan and the Ilkhan of 
 Persia and cut off their road back. But no Venetian was 
 ever at a loss or averse from seeing new lands, and so 
 the Polos decided to go on and visit the Khan of Central 
 Asia or Chagatai, and perhaps make their way back to 
 Constantinople by some unfrequented route. They struggled 
 over the great steppes which lie beween the Volga and the 
 Aral, and coming by Khiva followed the line of the Oxus down 
 to the city of Bokhara, one of the richest and most crowded 
 marts of Asia, lying upon the great silk-route. Here they 
 remained for three years and learned the Tartar tongue, 
 until one day an embassy came to the city on its way back 
 from Persia to the Great Khan in China, and the envoys, 
 amazed to find Italians in this distant spot, persuaded the 
 brothers to accompany them. So for a year the Polos 
 journeyed with the Tartar embassy across the heart of Asia, 
 until at last they stood in the presence of Kublai Khan himself. 
 He gave them the warm welcome which his envoys had 
 promised, and listened to all that they had to tell him about 
 the West, for they were the first Europeans that he had seen. 
 Finally he decided to send them back on a mission to the 
 Pope, asking for a hundred men of learning to preach to 
 
 1 The standard English edition of Marco Polo’s book is The Book 
 of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels 
 of the East, ed. Sir Henry Yule (3rd edit., revised by H. Cordier, Hakluyt 
 Soc., 1903, 2 vols.). See also H. Cordier, Sey Marco Polo, Notes and 
 Addenda (1920). 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 133 
 
 his Tartars and some oil from the sacred lamp on the Sepulchre 
 at Jerusalem. The return journey across central Asia 
 was slow and hazardous and took the brothers three years, 
 but they reached Acre at last in 1269. 
 
 They set out to go back to the Great Khan in November, 
 1271, bearing with them letters from Pope Gregory X and 
 the holy oil; but the only men of learning who accompanied 
 them were two Dominicans, who deserted in a panic at 
 Lajazzo. However, they took with them no mean substitute 
 for the hundred men of learning asked for by the Great Khan 
 in the person of Nicolo’s son Marco Polo, a lad of seventeen. 
 Landing at Lajazzo in the Gulf of Alexandretta, the Polos 
 travelled by way of Mosul and Baghdad to Ormuz on the 
 Persian Gulf, where they possibly intended to take ship 
 and make the long sea journey to one of the Chinese ports. 
 They did not, however, do this, but instead turned north 
 through the salt desert of Kerman, through Balkh and 
 Khorasan and Badakhshan (where they halted for a year 
 to allow Marco Polo to recover from an illness), over the 
 icy highlands of Pamir, the ‘roof of the world’, where Marco 
 saw and noted the long horned mountain sheep, the ovis Poll, 
 which now bears his name, though indeed William of 
 Rubruck saw and described it before him. They followed 
 the old southern caravan route, on which no European 
 was ever seen again until the nineteenth century, passing 
 through Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan until they reached 
 the edge of the Gobi desert. Here they halted to load their 
 camels with provisions and then set out on the terrible 
 three days’ journey across the desert, beset with nightmare 
 fears and the sound of ghostly drums and gongs, tempting 
 the unwary traveller from the road at night. At last they 
 came safely to Tangut on the extreme north-west of China, 
 skirted the frontier across the Mongolian steppes, and reached 
 the court of the Great Khan in May, 1275, having journeyed 
 for three and a half years. 
 
 The Khan received them with high honour, and instantly 
 took the young Marco into his service. It was the beginning 
 of a long and close association, for Kublai Khan soon found 
 him very intelligent, discreet, and observant, and began to 
 employ him on various missions. Everywhere Marco Polo 
 went, readily picking up several of the languages current 
 
1384 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 in the Great Khan’s dominions, he observed and made notes 
 of what he saw, and the Khan was wont to say that alone 
 among his envoys this man used his eyes and could bring 
 back with him not merely an account of the rendering of his 
 mission but a hundred interesting and entertaining details 
 about the lands through which he passed and the people 
 whom he saw. How much do we not owe to the noble 
 curiosity of Kublai Khan, which stimulated Marco Polo 
 to see and to enquire, and to make such careful notes 
 concerning the marvellous empire which he was the first 
 European to see! The extent of his travel was immense. 
 He journeyed through the provinces of Shansi, Shensi and 
 Szechuan, and even skirted the edge of Tibet to Yunnan 
 and penetrated to Northern Burma. He was for three years 
 Governor of the Chinese city of Yangchow. He went by sea 
 on a mission to Cochin-China and on to India. He describes 
 the Great Khan’s capital of Cambaluc, or Peking, in the 
 North, and his summer palace at Shandu with its woods 
 and gardens, its marble palace and bamboo pavilion, its 
 magicians, and its stud of white mares; indeed, he gave 
 Shandu immortality in a misty Western island, destined 
 one day to rule a sea empire wider even than the land empire 
 of Kublai Khan, for it was from his description of it that 
 Coleridge drew his dream picture of Xanadu : 
 
 In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 
 A stately pleasure dome decree, 
 
 Where Alph the sacred river ran 
 
 Past caverns measureless to man 
 
 Down to a sunless sea. 
 
 And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills 
 Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree, 
 And here were forests, ancient as the hills, 
 Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. 
 
 He describes also Manzi, or Southern China, with its capital, 
 the beautiful Kinsai (Hangchow), which later European 
 travellers always described (as indeed he did himself) in 
 terms almost of rapture, declaring it to be the greatest, 
 richest and loveliest city in the world; Kinsai, which stood 
 like Venice upon innumerable canals, with its twelve great 
 gates and the twelve thousand bridges which spanned its 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 135 
 
 waterways, its wide streets lined by houses and shops and 
 gardens, the stone warehouses of merchants from India 
 refiected all along its great canal, and hard by the city 
 that Western Lake, which generations of Chinese poets 
 have so incomparably sung; Kinsai, with its silk clad 
 population of lords and merchants, and its ladies, of whom 
 even a Franciscan friar could not refrain from noting that 
 they were the most beautiful in the world.1_ Marco Polo 
 tells also of Zaiton (Ts‘tienchow), the great port of the province 
 and plainly, from the accounts which survive of it, one of the 
 greatest ports of the world,? to which there came a hundred 
 times more pepper every year than reached the whole of 
 Christendom through Alexandria and the harbours of 
 the Levant. At Zaiton the big junks laded spices and aloes, 
 ebony and sandal wood from Indo-China, together with 
 Tibetan musk and the unmatched silks of China, and 
 sailed with them to India, there to trade them for pearls 
 and precious stones from Ceylon, pepper and ginger and 
 muslins ‘ like tissue of spiders’ webs’ from Southern India. 
 Marco Polo describes, indeed, the whole of that splendid empire, 
 full of wealth and commerce, with its canal and river traffic, 
 its system of posts and caravanserais, its paper money, 
 and its great ruler Kublai Khan, who was worthy of the 
 ancient civilization which he thus inherited. He describes 
 also the strange and half barbarous people of Tibet and 
 Central Asia, and is the first European to speak of Burma, 
 Siam, Java, Sumatra and Ceylon. It is almost impossible 
 to speak too highly either of the extent of his observation 
 or of its accuracy. It is true that he repeats some of the 
 usual travellers’ tales, and that where he reports from 
 hearsay he not infrequently makes mistakes; but where 
 he had observed with his own eyes he was almost always 
 accurate; he had a great opportunity, and he was great 
 enough to take it. 
 
 Marco Polo had, indeed, ample time to make these 
 
 1 Oderic of Pordenone. See below, p. 149. 
 
 2 Ibn Battitah said of it later: ‘The harbour of Zaiton is one of the 
 greatest in the world—I am wrong, it is the greatest. I have seen 
 there about a hundred first class junks together ; as for the small ones, 
 they were past counting’ (Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Yule (1916 ed.), 
 iv, p. 118). He had seen Alexandria, Constantinople, and the great ports 
 
 of Southern India ; and Marco Polo and the other Italians knew Venice 
 and Genoa, the greatest European trading cities of the Mediterranean. 
 
136 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 observations, for he remained in China from 1275 to 1292. 
 Then the old Khan was very unwillingly persuaded to allow 
 the three Polos to return to Europe as escorts of a Tartar 
 princess who was being sent as a bride to the Ilkhan of Persia. 
 They set sail from Zaiton and spent over two years on the 
 journey, but finally reached Persia, handed over the lady, 
 and came back by Tabriz, Trebizond, and Constantinople 
 to Venice at last in the winter of 1295. 
 
 There is no need to labour the effect of the tremendous 
 mass of exact knowledge which the reports of Marco Polo 
 brought to the enterprising mercantile world of Venice 
 and Genoa, and to the hardly less enterprising ecclesiastical 
 world which was still cherishing its great scheme of converting 
 the Tartars. The two friars who first penetrated to Mongolia 
 and the three merchants who first made the great tour 
 to Cathay by land and back to Europe by sea were only 
 pioneers of a widespread movement. For it was by now 
 plain that the Tartar Empire had wrought one of the most 
 startling revolutions in the history of the world up to that 
 date by bringing into contact for the first time the two ends 
 of the earth, Europe and the Far East. For the next fifty 
 years or so, roughly between 1290 and 1340, a steady stream 
 of travellers took the Eastern road. They had need, indeed, 
 to find new trade routes, for the collapse of the Latin power 
 in Palestine, culminating in the loss of Acre in 1291, was 
 seriously interrupting the old. The term ‘trade routes’ is 
 used advisedly, for although some of the best travel books 
 belonging to this period were written by missionaries, the 
 real impetus to travel was given by trade, and the most 
 frequent journeys to Persia, India and Cathay were made 
 by merchants. These merchants now found themselves 
 no longer mere clients at the closed gates of the East, loading 
 their ships with goods brought to those termini by Muslim 
 middlemen ; they found that they could pass through the 
 gates and themselves follow the trade routes. Direct 
 access to the East was at last open to them, and it has been 
 said with truth that ‘ the unification of Asia by the Mongols 
 was as important a fact for the commerce of the Middle Ages 
 as the discovery of America for the men of the Renaissance. 
 It was equivalent to the discovery of Asia.’ } 
 
 1 R. Grousset, Hist. de] ’ Aste (Paris, 1922), iii, p. 130. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 137 
 
 What the Tartars in effect did was to throw open two 
 out of the three great trade routes between East and West. 
 One, the Egyptian road, remained in the hands of the Muslims 
 and closed to Europeans, though the Venetian galleys 
 still brought back their cargoes of spices and silk from the 
 great terminus port of Alexandria. But the other two, 
 the Persian-Syrian and long sea route and the Transasiatic 
 land route were in the hands of the Tartars and were now 
 thrown open. Marco Polo went by the latter and returned 
 by the former. 
 
 Consider first the sea route to India, reached through 
 the new Ilkhanate of Persia. During the Tartar period 
 Persia resumed her historic role of antechamber to the East, 
 which she had not played since the days of Alexander. The 
 capital of Tartar Persia, Tabriz, or Tauris, soon outshone 
 Baghdad as the chief mart of the district, and was visited 
 and admired by all the great travellers of the age. ‘It 
 is the best city in the world for merchandise,’ said Oderic 
 of Pordenone, ‘and is worth more to the emperor than his 
 whole kingdom is to the King of France.’ It had the initial 
 advantage that it could be reached by caravan routes from 
 two ports which were in Christian hands and thus did not 
 incur, like Alexandria, the papal ban against trading with 
 the infidel (not that Christian merchants took the ban very 
 seriously). One of these ports was Lajazzo or Ayas, on 
 the Gulf of Alexandretta in the kingdom of Little Armenia, 
 from which Marco Polo started on his outward journey, 
 and the other was Trebizond, on the southern shore of the 
 Black Sea, the capital of an independent Greek state, from 
 which he took ship on his way home. Coming from either 
 of these ports to Tabriz, merchants could then follow the 
 caravan route down to Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian 
 Gulf, which was the chief port for the Indian trade at this 
 period, and of which Marco Polo and other travellers have 
 left admirable descriptions. 
 
 Very soon this Persian route almost ousted the Egyptian 
 route as the vestibule between the Mediterranean and 
 the Indian Ocean. The Mamluk sultans of Egypt 
 imposed such heavy tolls at Alexandria that Indian 
 merchandise increased 800% in price by the time it got to 
 Europe; also they were apt to molest the Christian merchants 
 
188 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 and strictly forbade them the interior. But in Persia the 
 Ilkhans pursued an enlightened policy, imposing low customs, 
 protecting traders, policing the roads, establishing a regular 
 system of posts, and allowing free passage everywhere. ‘The 
 Europeans were not slow to take advantage of the new 
 facilities ; we hear of an Italian merchant in Tabriz as early 
 as 1264 (his will, made there in that year, survives and sets 
 forth his stock of cloth from Venice, Germany and Flanders, 
 pearls and sugar and chessmen from the East, saddles, 
 cups, candlesticks and drinking glasses)! At first the trade 
 of the district fell mainly to the Genoese, and to this day 
 the Turks of Asia Minor are wont to attribute to that 
 enterprising people any ancient stone building whose origin 
 is unknown.?. Marco Polo found them all powerful at Tabriz 
 in 1294 and mentions that a Genoese company was already 
 navigating the great inland Caspian Sea. But the Venetians 
 began to compete with them early in the fourteenth century, 
 and had an advantageous commercial treaty with the 
 Ilkhan in 1320 and a Consul in Tabriz in 1824. 
 
 At first, too,Christian missionaries had a considerable success. 
 The great Khan Hulagu, who first made himself master of 
 Persia, had a Nestorian wife,? and they both treated their 
 Christian subjects with a favour which contrasted strongly 
 with their severity towards the Muslims, so that the Armenian 
 writers celebrate them ‘as a new Constantine and Helena, 
 the hope and solace of Christians, the torches and protectors 
 of religion.?4 This favour was even more marked under 
 Arghun Khan (1284-91), who also had a Nestorian wife, 
 and rumours of whose conversion to Christianity were 
 constantly coming West. It was the deliberate policy 
 of this prince to bring about a general crusade against the 
 Mamluks of Egypt by a combination between himself 
 and the Latin Powers, and constant embassies passed between 
 him and the Pope and other Christian monarchs. In 1287 
 the famous Rabban Bar Sauma, a Nestorian Uigur from 
 Cathay, who had come to Armenia on his way to make a 
 
 1 W. Heyd, Hist. du Commerce du Levant, ed. Furcy Raynaud, 
 (2nd ed. Leipzig, 1923), ii, p. 110. His name was Pietro Viglioni. 
 
 Ao Wael: ad Sah eet 
 
 § Similarly William of Rubruck found that many royal and high- 
 
 born Tartar ladies at Karakorum were Christians. 
 * Grousset, op. cit., ili, pp. 102-3. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 139 
 
 pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was sent by Arghun on an embassy 
 to Europe to rouse its rulers to common action against Islam. 
 He visited Constantinople and Rome, delivered to Philip 
 the Fair at Paris a letter from Arghun, written in Uigur 
 characters, which may still be seen in the Archives Nationales, 
 and interviewed Edward I of England in Guyenne. In 
 1289 the Ilkhan sent another embassy to Paris and London, 
 promising the king of France that he would give him Jerusalem 
 when it was taken, and in 1290 yet another envoy came from 
 him to the Pope. It is of some interest that among the return 
 embassies which were sent to Arghun one went from England 
 in 1291, under the leadership of Geoffrey de Langele, and 
 the account of its expenses has survived ; moreover, two 
 Mongol ambassadors actually presented themselves before 
 Edward II at Northampton in 1807, and took back with 
 them a letter to the Ilkhan Uljaytu.! It is not surprising, 
 in view of these exchanges, that Christian missions flourished 
 in Persia, that churches and houses of friars sprang up in 
 various parts, and that one of the most interesting mission 
 writers of this age (which abounds in them) should be 
 Ricold of Monte Croce, the Dominican friar who laboured 
 in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia and Persia from about 1286. 
 But the fair hopes of the Christian missions were slain by 
 the final conversion of the Ilkhans to Islam in 1816, and though 
 a great missionary effort took place between 1318 and 1336, 
 and Catholic bishoprics continued to be founded in these 
 parts and maintained a wonderful vitality, we hear little 
 of them after about 1340.2 
 
 But it was not for the sake of Persia alone that the opening 
 of the land route was epoch making. Persia was only the ante- 
 chamber ; what was more important was that at Ormuz 
 Europeans could now take ship and bear their gospel and 
 their trade to India itself. In 1315 agents of the Genoese bank 
 of Vivaldi (the same enterprising family which a quarter of 
 
 1 For these diplomatic missions, see Abel-Rémusat, ‘ Memoires sur 
 les Relations politiques des Princes chretiens et particuli¢rement les 
 Rois de France, avec les Empereurs Mongols’ (Mem. de l’ Acad. Royale 
 des Inscriptions et Belles-Letives, T. iv and v, 1821-2). Short accounts 
 are given by Grousset, op. cit., iii, pp. 107-9, and by Beazley, op. cit., 1ii, 
 PP- 492-3, 539-47. 
 
 2 For Ricold of Monte Croce and the Persian mission, see Beazley, 
 op. cit., lili, pp. 187-215. 
 
140 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 a century before had sailed forth to find the road to India 
 down the African coast and disappeared for ever)1 had 
 trading stations on the Gujerat and Malabar coasts. 
 Kuropean merchants regularly visited the great ports of 
 the Gulf of Cambay and of Malabar and Coromandel, 
 which were crowded with a mixed population of Christians, 
 Hindus, Muslims and Chinese; for, as Heyd points out, 
 the great age of the Tartars corresponds with the period 
 of greatest activity in the political and commercial relations 
 between India and China, and these ports, especially Calicut 
 and Quilon, were among the richest in the world. Missionary 
 activity was no less active here than in Persia. A Latin 
 mission visited the Malabar region under John of Monte 
 Corvino in 1291-2, and was indeed there when Marco Polo 
 passed on his way home; and we hear of four Franciscans 
 who were martyred at Tannah on the Gulf of Cambay in 
 1321, in circumstances which made a great impression 
 upon contemporaries, for the episode is mentioned by almost 
 every mission writer of the time. In 1829 John XXII 
 made Quilon a bishopric and sent there as bishop the 
 Dominican Jordanus of Séverac, one of the best travel writers 
 of this period.2, He was replaced later by John Marignolli, 
 on the latter’s return from China in 1348-9. There was a 
 Catholic church called St. George of the Latins there, and the 
 Latin mission found an indigenous Nestorian population 
 of great antiquity, the reputed descendants of St. Thomas’ 
 converts, and the shrine of St. Thomas at Quilon was held in 
 great veneration. Descriptions of India are given by Marco 
 Polo, Jordanus, Oderie of Pordenone and Marignolli. »We 
 hear of the fabulous riches, the splendid bazaars, the great 
 manufactures of muslin and cottons, the pearl fisheries 
 of Ceylon, the pepper gardens and world famous ginger of 
 Quilon, and the huge ocean-going ships which crowded the 
 harbours. They describe the natural features of the 
 country, the tremendous heat, the dark rice-eating population, 
 the delicious fruits, jack and mango and coco-nut, the 
 palmyra palm, the brilliant parrots, the many elephants and 
 
 1 On this enterprise of Ugolino and Guido Vivaldi and two Franciscan 
 friars and on the traditional explorations of Ugolino’s son Sorleone in 
 search of them, see Beazley, op. cit., iii, pp. 413-18. 
 
 2 For Jordanus and the Indian mission, see ibid., iii, pp. 215-35. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 141 
 
 crocodiles. They tell also of the religion of the Hindus, 
 with their sacred oxen, their enormous idols, their ascetic 
 fakirs, their sacred caste of Brahmans and the practice of 
 suttee. Jordanus speaks of a prophecy, handed down among 
 the Indians, that the Latin races were destined to conquer 
 all the world ; in how dramatic a manner it was to receive 
 fulfilment later he could not foresee ; but he declares that the 
 King of France could easily, by his own force alone, subdue 
 this fair land to Christianity, he deplores the success of the 
 Muslim missionaries, who had the effrontery to travel about 
 the East for all the world like ourselves (sicut nos),} and 
 declares that if the Pope would but send two galleys to the 
 Indian seas, and so catch the Sultan of Egypt in a noose, 
 marvels might be accomplished. 
 
 Moreover, although all travellers touched at an Indian 
 port all did not stay there. For they could now take ship 
 on one of the Chinese junks which came to Quilon and Malabar. 
 Ibn Battiitah at one time saw thirteen large junks lying ready 
 to sail in the port of Malabar, and admirable descriptions 
 of them are given by Marco Polo, Oderic, Ibn Battitah and 
 Jordanus. They were made of fir and single decked, with 
 fifty or sixty cabins and four (sometimes six) masts, double 
 planked and furnished with water-tight compartments. 
 They used both sails and oars and their crews numbered 
 some 800 or 400 men; Ibn Battiitah tells how the sailors had 
 pots of herbs and ginger growing aboard, and sang ‘La, 
 la! La, la!’ as they pulled the oars. On the junk on which 
 Oderic of Pordenone embarked at Quilon there were ‘a good 
 700 souls, what with sailors and merchants’. Aboard one 
 of these European travellers could sail on past Java and 
 Sumatra and Indo-China to Cynkalan (Canton), or Zaiton 
 by the route which Marco Polo took on his return journey, 
 and many European travellers after 1290 came to China 
 by this long sea route. Its disadvantage was that it was very 
 slow (it took two years), and it was because the land route 
 was much shorter and reputed to be safer that medieval 
 
 1 Professor Beazley notes: ‘ It was at this very time, as a matter of 
 history, that Moslem perfida began its permanent conquest of the Malay 
 world, began successfully to compass the seas and lands of the 
 Archipelago in search of proselytes, began to penetrate even to the 
 interior of Java and Sumatra.’ Ibid., iii, p. 234. 
 
1422 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 opinion preferred the second of the two roads which the 
 Tartars opened to the West. 
 
 This was the great caravan route across Central Asia, 
 and it may be said with truth that if the Tartar conquest 
 of Persia opened the road to India the Tartar conquest 
 of Russia opened the road to China.! The great overland 
 silk route across Asia is one of the oldest and one of the most 
 romantic trade routes in the world and its immense 
 importance at this period can hardly be overestimated. 
 Travellers could get by it to China in five or six months, 
 travelling with the imperial posts, though caravans naturally 
 took longer. It could be reached from Trebizond or Lajazzo 
 via Tabriz by making the golden journey to Merv, Bokhara 
 and Samarcand along a caravan route which joined them ; 2 
 but from the beginning of the fourteenth century another 
 route became much more important and that was the road 
 which went from the Crimea by land or sea to Tana (Azov), 
 then across the steppes to Astrakhan or to Sarai on the Volga, 
 and by camel across the desert to Urgenje (near Khiva) on the 
 Oxus, and so on to the Bokhara-Samareand route, and 
 straight across central Asia by one of the three great roads, 
 the north Thian Shan (Pe-lu), the south Thian Shan (Nan-lu) 
 or the north Kuenlun into China.? 
 
 This road again meant direct access for Europe to the 
 Far East. In 1266 the Mongol Khan of Kipchak authorized 
 the Genoese to establish a colony at Kaffa on the shores 
 of the Crimea, and the Venetians had one at Soldaia. Later 
 they were allowed to establish themselves in Tana, too. 
 These two towns are immensely interesting and deserve 
 each a monograph.* Tana was the great focus for the 
 corn and furs and other products of Russia, the silks and 
 spices of the Far East and the merchandise of India, coming 
 up by the Khyber Pass or through Persia. Kaffa was a 
 curious cosmopolitan city, crowded with mosques and 
 churches, Tartars and Muslims and Christians, an inveterate 
 centre for the slave trade. This Crimean district grew 
 
 1 Grousset, op. cit., iii, p. 137. 
 
 2 There was also a more southern route which went via Kashgar, 
 Yarkand, and Khotan, and which Marco Polo followed. 
 
 3 See Beazley, op. cit., ili, p. 462. 
 
 * See an excellent short account of them in Heyd, op. cit., ii, pp. 156- 
 215. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 143 
 
 steadily in importance as a great mart for the Eastern trade, 
 and here again the Genoese played the most important 
 part. They had a special branch of the Government, the 
 offictum Gazarie, or Crimean Office, to look after their Black 
 Sea trade, and when in 1343 the Kipchak Khan quarrelled 
 with the Italians, seized Tana, and laid siege to Kaffa, there 
 was a dearth of corn and foodstuffs throughout the Byzantine 
 Empire and the price of Eastern silks and spices forthwith 
 doubled in Italy, which shows how the overland route 
 had by this time outstripped the others in importance. 
 Kaffa was to be brought even more disastrously to the 
 notice of Europe in 1348, for it was through it that the 
 Black Death, which originated in China, reached the West. 
 Some say that it broke out among the Tartars who were 
 once again besieging Kaffa, and that they threw the infected 
 corpses into the town by means of their siege instruments 
 in order to achieve a more rapid victory. Others say that 
 it broke out among the defenders, the merchants who were 
 gathered in the town having brought it with them from 
 China rolled up in their bales of silk.1 At all events the 
 siege was raised owing to the plague, and it seems certain 
 that it was in a Black Sea ship that the Black Death got 
 to Italy. 
 
 What direct access from Azov to Peking meant to the 
 merchants of the day is best witnessed not so much in the 
 journeys of missionary travellers as in the account of the 
 overland silk trade left by Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, 
 an agent of the great Florentine house of Bardi, who about 
 1340 wrote an admirable merchants’ handbook concerning 
 chiefly the trade of the Levant and the East. He gives full 
 information for a merchant starting from Tana and proceeding 
 to Peking, returning again with £12,000 worth of silk (reckoned 
 in modern money). The stages of the journey, the mode of 
 conveyance appropriate to each stage, whether horses, 
 camel wagons or pack asses, the time to be allowed for 
 each stage, the provisions to be taken, and the estimated 
 cost are all set forth, together with a careful comparison 
 
 1 It is noticeable that a number of Chinese silks which still survive 
 in medieval church treasuries or in museums in Europe belong to this 
 period of the Yuan or Tartar dynasty. See some examples reproduced 
 in Chinese Art (Burlington Magazine Monographs, 1925), Textiles, 
 Plates 1 and 2. 
 
144 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 of the weights and measures in use in Tana and in Cathay. 
 His general instructions are full of interest. ‘‘ In the first 
 place you must let your beard grow long and not shave. 
 And at Tana you should furnish yourself with a dragoman, 
 and you must not try to save money in the matter of dragomen 
 by taking a bad one instead of a good one, for the additional 
 wages of the good one will not cost you so much as you will 
 save by having him. And besides the dragoman it will be 
 well to take at least two good men servants who are 
 acquainted with the Cumanian tongue, and if the merchant 
 likes to take a woman with him from Tana he can do so; 
 if he does not like to take one there is no obligation, only 
 if he does take one he will be kept much more comfortably 
 than if he does not... The road you travel from 
 Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or by 
 night, according to what the merchants say who have used 
 it... You may reckon that from Tana to Sarai the 
 road is less safe than on any other part of the journey, and 
 yet even when this part of the road is at its worst, if you are 
 some sixty men in the company, you will go as safely as 
 if you were in your own house. Anyone from Genoa or 
 from Venice wishing to go to the places above named and 
 to make the journey to Cathay should carry linens with him 
 and if he visit Organci (Urgenje) he will dispose of these 
 well. In Organci he should purchase somni! of silver and 
 with these he should proceed ... Whatever silver the 
 merchants carry with them as far as Cathay the lord 
 of Cathay will take from them and put in his treasury, 
 and to merchants who thus bring silver they give that paper 
 money of theirs in exchange. This is of yellow paper, 
 stamped with the seal of the lord aforesaid, and this money 
 is called balisht and with this money you can readily buy 
 silk and all other merchandise that you have a desire to 
 buy, and all the people of the country are bound to receive 
 it, and yet you shall not pay a higher price for your goods 
 because your money is of paper. And of the said paper 
 money there are three kinds, one being worth more than 
 another, according to the value which has been established 
 
 1 The somno was a silver ingot weighing 8} Genoese Ib., the Genoese 
 lb. being equal to about # of the London lb. ; it was reckoned as worth 
 five golden florins. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 145 
 
 for each by that lord.1. And you may reckon that you 
 can buy for one somno of silver 19 or 20 lb. of Cathay 
 suk. You may reckon also that in Cathay you should get 
 3 or 34 pieces of damask silk for a somno and from 34 to 5 
 pieces of nachettt of silk and gold likewise for a somno of 
 silver.”’ * 
 
 There can be no more striking commentary on the effect 
 of the Tartar conquests than that casual remark, dropped 
 by Pegolotti in passing, that ‘the road you travel from 
 Tana to Cathay is perfectly safe, whether by day or night, 
 according to what merchants say who have used it.’ Traders, 
 indeed, seem to have used it regularly, and so did some of the 
 friar travellers of the fourteenth century. There were 
 mission stations all along the route, at Kaffa and Tana, 
 at Bolgar, at Sarai, at Astrakhan, at Urgenje, at 
 Almalik (Kulja). ‘Even more than in China or Persia,’ 
 says Professor Beazley, ‘these Latin outposts from the 
 Kuxine to Kazan, from the Caucasus to Kulja, represent 
 the exploring spirit of the Roman Church in its highest 
 form. For where could the enmity of Nature and Man 
 be defied more recklessly ? Where in all the known world 
 could distance, barbarism, sterility and fanaticism present 
 a more formidable combination of obstacles?’® The 
 flourishing Christian mission at Almalik was the seat of a 
 Franciscan bishop, Richard of Burgundy, and it was here 
 that there laboured Friar Pascal of Vittoria, whose admirable 
 letter upon his travels, written in 1388, has fortunately 
 survived. The advent of a Muslim khan caused his massacre 
 and that of the whole mission, which included the Bishop, 
 Pascal, two other Franciscan priests, two Franciscan lay 
 brethren, a ‘black’ interpreter named ‘John of India’, 
 and a Genoese trader, who was in Almalik at the time. 
 This was in 1339, and although the church at Almalik was 
 rebuilt again by Marignolli in 1340, and the Latin mission 
 maintained a precarious existence until 1362, it is clear that 
 Pegolotti, had he but known it, when he described the road 
 
 1 Paper money first began to be used in China as early as 
 ¢. A.D. 806-21. 
 
 2 See extracts from Pegolotti’s Della Pratica della Mercatura in 
 Cathay and the Way Thither, ed. Yule (Hakluyt Soc., 2nd ed., 1914), 
 
 lili, pp. 137-73 passim. 
 3 Beazley, op. cit., iii, pp. 238-9. 
 
1446 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 as sichurissimo, was speaking of an age which was already 
 passing away. 
 
 These, then, were the different routes by which European 
 travellers found their way to the Far East at the beginning 
 of the fourteenth century. It remains to consider some 
 of the most distinguished of those who went.2 The most 
 numerous travellers were undoubtedly the merchants, but 
 although they have left traces of their activity in such 
 practical forms as Pegolotti’s handbook and a lexicon of 
 Latin, Persian and Cuman, compiled in 1303 by an anonymous 
 merchant of Northern Italy,? and although they are, from 
 time to time, mentioned incidentally in the narratives 
 of other travellers, these traders have for the most part 
 left no written account of their adventures. Marco Polo’s 
 is the one great travel book written by a merchant in this 
 period, and (with the exception of the extremely amusing 
 book of the Moor Ibn Battiitah) our accounts of the East 
 occur in the letters, reports and books of Christian 
 missionaries, and above all of the intrepid and indefatigable 
 friars of St. Francis. Truly might Ricold of Montecroce 
 remark, ‘’Tis worthy of the grateful remembrance of all 
 Christian people that just at the time when God sent forth 
 into the Eastern parts of the world the Tartars to slay and 
 to be slain, He also sent forth into the West His faithful and 
 blessed servants Dominic and Francis, to enlighten, instruct 
 and build up the Faith.’ 5 
 
 Of these friars one of the most intrepid and attractive 
 is John of Monte Corvino, first papal legate to, and afterwards 
 Archbishop of, Peking, who, when nearly fifty years of age, 
 set out to take the gospel into India and China, the first 
 Latin Christian to leave us a picture of India and St. Thomas’ 
 shrine, where he spent a year, and the true founder of the 
 
 1 On Pascal of Vittoria and the Central Asian Mission see Beazley, 
 op. cit., ili, pp. 235-50. There was also a Dominican Bishop of 
 Samarcand in 1330. 
 
 2 The most important accounts of Cathay by European travellers 
 during this period are collected and translated in Cathay and the Way 
 Thither, ed. Sir Henry Yule (2nd ed. revised by H. Cordier, Hakluyt 
 Soc., 1913-16), 4 vols. 
 
 3 See Beazley, op. cit., iii, p. 480, and Heyd, op. cit., ii, p. 242. 
 
 * For a list of such references see Yule’s introduction to Cathay and 
 the Way Thither, i, pp. 170-1. 
 
 5 Quoted by Yule, ibid., i, p. 155. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 147 
 
 Latin Church in China. Of his labours in Cathay we know 
 from two letters, written in 1305 and 1306 respectively, 
 which he sent home by some of the many Tartar envoys, 
 who were continually passing to and fro between the Great 
 Khan in Cathay and the Ilkhan of Persia; and his second 
 letter is addressed to the friars of the Persian mission. In 
 the first he describes how he had laboured alone in Cathay 
 for eleven years, until two years previously a German friar 
 from Cologne had joined him ; how he had failed to convert 
 the Great Khan himself, but had won over a great Nestorian 
 prince named George, of whose son he was godfather, and 
 who had built him a new church twenty days’ journey from 
 Peking. He himself had built in Peking a church with a bell 
 tower and three bells; moreover, he had bought 150 pagan 
 boys, between seven and eleven years of age, had baptised them 
 and taught them Greek and Latin, and had trained a number 
 of them as a choir, so that the Great Khan himself delighted 
 to hear them chanting. He had translated the New 
 Testament and the Psalter into the language and character 
 most generally used among the Tartars. He begs for news 
 of home, for service books and above all for comrades to 
 be sent to help him by the land road across Asia, where 
 they could travel with the imperial letter carriers. ‘I 
 myself am grown old and grey, more with toil and trouble 
 than with years, for I am not more than 58.’ 
 
 The next year he sent another letter to the Persian friars, 
 reporting the progress of his new church. The land had 
 been bought for him by Master Peter of Lucolongo, ‘a 
 faithful Christian man and a great merchant,’ who had joined 
 him in Tabriz at the very beginning of his journey and had 
 dwelt with him all these years in India and Peking ; a mute 
 inglorious Marco Polo, whose own story we would fain 
 have heard. The site was but the width of the street from 
 the Khan’s own palace, and on it had already sprung up a 
 chapel and courts, offices and houses, ‘and I tell you,’ says 
 the good friar, ‘ it is thought a perfect marvel by all the people 
 who came from the city and elsewhere ... and when 
 they see our new building and the red cross planted aloft, 
 and us in our chapel with all decorum chanting the service, 
 they wonder more than ever. When we are singing, his 
 Majesty the Cham can hear our voices in his chamber, 
 
148 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 and this wonderful fact is spread far and wide among the 
 heathen ... And I have a place in the Cham’s court 
 and a regular entrance and seat assigned me as legate of 
 our lord the Pope, and the Cham honours me above all other 
 prelates, whatever be their titles. And although his Majesty 
 the Cham has heard much of the Court of Rome and the 
 state of the Latin world, he desires greatly to see envoys 
 arriving from that region.’ } 
 
 This letter also reached the West safely and came to the 
 knowledge of the Pope, who in 1307 created Monte Corvino 
 Archbishop of Cambaluc and sent out to him three suffragans, 
 followed by three more in 1312, all of them Franciscans 
 from Italy. The first three became successively bishops of 
 Zaiton, and one of them, Andrew of Perugia, wrote a letter 
 in 1826 to his mother-house, which gives an interesting 
 picture of the Latin Church in that city. A fine cathedral 
 had been built there by a rich Armenian lady, and Andrew 
 himself had built a handsome church and convent in a grove 
 outside the city, with a fine lodging ‘fit for any prelate’. 
 “I know none among all the convents of our province,’ 
 he says, ‘to be compared with it in elegance and other 
 amenities.” He was supported by an imperial dole, the 
 value of which amounted to 100 golden florins a year, 
 ‘according to the estimate of the Genoese merchants’ (an 
 interesting reference).? 
 
 But two years before he wrote the letter in which he 
 records these things there arrived in China a far more 
 important traveller from our point of view, to wit, Friar 
 Oderic of Pordenone, who has left us what is perhaps the 
 second best travel book of the period, second only to Marco 
 Polo, and superior to Marco Polo in its personal note. Oderic 
 went by the long sea route from Ormuz to Canton, stopping 
 en route in India, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. 
 From Canton he went by land to Zaiton and on to Kinsai, 
 Jamzai (Yangchow) and Menzu (Ningpo), and by the Grand 
 Canal to Cambaluc, his companion during a part of his 
 journey being an Irish friar named James. He spent three 
 years in Cambaluc and returned home bya land route, which 
 apparently included a visit to Tibet and Lhassa, of which 
 
 * For his letter see Cathay and the Way Thither, iii, pp. 45-58. 
 2 See ibid., pp. 71-5. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 149 
 
 he gives a vague but interesting account. He describes 
 Canton, ‘a city as big as three Venices and all Italy has not 
 the amount of craft that this one city hath,’ and speaks also 
 of the immense number of junks in the other cities of Southern 
 China, adding * indeed it is something hard to believe when 
 you hear of, or even see, the vast scale of the shipping in these 
 parts’. Of this ‘noble province of Manzi’ he says, ‘I made 
 diligent inquiry from Christians, Saracens, idolaters and from 
 all the Great Khan’s officers, and they all told me, with 
 one consent, as it were, that the province of Manzi hath 
 2,000 great cities, cities, mean, of such magnitude that neither 
 Treviso nor Vicenza would be entitled to be numbered 
 among them. Indeed in that country the number of people 
 is so great that among us here it would be deemed incredible ; 
 and in many parts I have seen the population more dense 
 than the crowds you see at Venice on Ascension day. And 
 the land hath great store of bread, of wine, of rice, of flesh 
 and of fish of sorts, and of all manner of victuals whatever 
 that are used by mankind. And all the people of this 
 country are traders and artificers, and no man ever seeketh 
 alms, however poor he be, as long as he can do anything 
 with his own hands to help himself ; but those who are fallen 
 into indigence and infirmity are well looked after and 
 provided with necessities. The men, as to their bodily 
 aspect, are comely enough, but colourless, having beards 
 of long straggling hairs like mousers (cats, I mean). And 
 as for the women, they are the most beautiful in the world.’ 
 He describes Zaiton, a city ‘ twice as great as Bologna’ ; 
 and the two houses of Franciscan friars there, and also the 
 beautiful Kinsai, of which he says: ‘If anyone should desire 
 to tell of all the vastness and great marvels of this city, 
 a good quire of stationery (bonus quaternus stationis) would 
 not hold the matter, I trow, for ’tis the greatest and noblest 
 city and the finest for merchandise that the world 
 containeth.’! He gives a delightful picture also of Cambaluc 
 
 1 In Ramusio’s edition (1583) his account includes the interesting 
 phrase: ‘’Tis the greatest city in the whole world, so great, indeed, 
 that I should scarcely venture to tell of it, but that I have met at Venice 
 people in plenty who have been there.’ It is not improbable that Oderic 
 should have met Venetian merchants who had visited Kinsai, but it is 
 impossible to say whether Ramusio invented the phrase or took it from 
 a lost early MS. 
 
150 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 and the Great Khan’s court there, and he materially 
 contributes to our knowledge in several directions by noting 
 things left unnoticed by Marco Polo, for instance the Chinese 
 custom of binding the feet of their women, the wearing of 
 long finger-nails by the men, and the practice of fishing 
 with cormorants. It is plain enough that he left his heart 
 behind him in China, for he ends his book with the words, 
 * As for me, from day to day I prepare myself to return to 
 those countries, in which I am content to die, if it pleaseth 
 Him from whom all good things do come.’ But this good 
 thing was not to come to him and he died in Italy. 
 
 His tales were written down by a brother friar (‘ just as 
 he told his story, so friar William wrote it’), and they are 
 followed by a testimony to the accuracy of the transcript 
 by a third friar, who adds such a charming anecdote that it 
 is impossible to refrain from quoting it, more especially 
 as it possibly gives us our last picture of the saintly Archbishop 
 John of Monte Corvino:1 ‘J, friar Marchesino of Bassano 
 of the Order of Minorites, desire to say that I heard the 
 preceding relation from the aforesaid Friar Oderic when he 
 was still living ; and I heard a good deal more, which he has 
 not set down. Among other stories which he told, this was 
 one. He related that once upon a time, when the Great 
 Khan was on his journey from Sandu to Cambalech, he with 
 four other Minor friars was sitting under the shade of a tree 
 by the side of the road, along which the Khan was about to 
 pass, and one of the brethren was a bishop. So when the 
 Khan began to draw near, the bishop put on his episcopal 
 robes and took a cross and fastened it to the end of a staff, 
 so as to raise it aloft; and then those four began to chant 
 with a loud voice the hymn ‘ Veni Creator Spiritus!’ And 
 then the Great Khan, hearing the sound thereof, asked what 
 it meant, and those four barons who go beside him replied 
 that it was four of the Frank Rabbans. So the Khan 
 called them to him and the Bishop thereupon, taking the 
 cross from the staff, presented it to the Khan to kiss. Now, 
 at the time he was lying down, but as soon as he saw the 
 cross he sat up, and doffing the cap that he wore, kissed the 
 cross in most reverent and humble manner. Now, the rule 
 
 + But the Bishop referred to may be Andrew of Perugia or one of the 
 other friars who became Bishop of Zaiton. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 151 
 
 and custom of that court is that no one shall venture to come 
 into the Khan’s presence empty-handed; so Friar Oderic, 
 having with him a small dish full of apples, presented that as 
 their offering to the Great Khan, and he took two of the apples 
 and ate a piece of one of them, whilst he kept the other in 
 his hand, and so he went his way. Now, it is clear enough 
 from this that the Khan himself had some savour of the 
 Catholic faith, as he well might, through the Minor friars 
 who dwelt at his court continually. And as for the cap 
 which he doffed so reverently before the cross, I have heard 
 Friar Oderic say that it was a mass of pearl and gems and was 
 worth more than the whole march of Treviso.’ + 
 
 Europe was not to have much further news of Cathay. 
 In 1328 John of Monte Corvino died, and ten years later 
 an embassy from the Great Khan and from a group of 
 Christian Alan princes appeared at the papal court, asking 
 for the appointment of a new legate. It was accompanied 
 by one Andrew the Frank, who is possibly the Andrew of 
 Perugia, whom we met as Bishop of Zaiton. In reply 
 an important papal embassy was sent out in charge of 
 John Marignolli, an aristrocratic Franciscan of Florence, 
 who has left us the last European account of the Far East 
 at this period, inappropriately embedded in a history of 
 Bohemia, which he wrote after his return. He took the 
 overland route and spent four years in China, returning 
 by sea from Zaiton and spending some time in Southern 
 India on the way. He found the Tartars and. Alans 
 venerating the dead Archbishop as a saint in Peking and the 
 Latin mission flourishing exceedingly. At Zaiton, too, 
 he describes the three great churches of the Franciscans, 
 and adds the interesting information that they had founded 
 there a fondaco and bath house for the use of European 
 merchants, an amazing testimony to the frequency with which 
 Western traders (mainly no doubt Genoese) visited the great 
 Chinese port.2 After his departure no more is heard of the 
 Latin mission; the Pope appointed Archbishops to it from 
 time to time in later years, but, so far as the active cure 
 of souls was concerned, to be made Archbishop of Peking 
 
 1 For these passages and the rest of Oderic’s account, see Cathay 
 and the Way Thither (1913 ed.), vol. 11, passim. 
 2 See ibid., ili, pp. 209-69. 
 
152 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 must have been analagous to applying for the Chiltern 
 Hundreds, since it was no longer possible for the Archbishop 
 to reach his See. 
 
 There are surely few episodes in history more remarkable 
 and more interesting than these years, when an Italian 
 archbishop held sway in Peking, when Genoese merchants 
 had a fondaco at Zaiton and chaffered in the ports of India, 
 when Franciscan friars set up convents in the towns of 
 Persia and China, and mission stations in Turkestan, and 
 when merchants and missionaries regularly took the caravan 
 roads across Central Asia, or sailed in junks through 
 the Indian Ocean and among the Spice Islands. 
 
 It was indeed remarkable, but the reason that it is remarked 
 less than it would seem to deserve lies in the fact that it was 
 strictly an episode. For the gallant missions and the direct 
 trade came to an end by the middle of the fourteenth century, 
 and the great black curtain rolled down again, cutting all 
 Europe from Asia and confining Europeans once again to the 
 termini of the trade routes. In the battle of Islam and the 
 Cross for the soul of Tartary it was Islam which won, as 
 Islam to this day so often wins in dealing with less civilized 
 peoples. Gradually the whole of Kipchak and Central Asia 
 became converted, and shut off the land route which had 
 been so sichurissimo in Pegolotti’s day. So, too, the Ilkhans 
 of Persia (having tried in vain for half a century to galvanize 
 Europe into doing something more than talk about a common 
 crusade against the Mamluks) finally embraced Islam in 
 1316, and though they at first retained their old Mongol 
 tolerance, the Persian vestibule was all but closed again by 
 the middle of the fourteenth century, and the Tartar dynasty 
 itself fell before the end.1 Finally, in 1868-70, a revolution 
 drove out the Tartar dynasty in China and replaced it by 
 a native dynasty, the Mings, who resumed the indigenous 
 anti-foreign policy of the Chinese, so that even had Europeans 
 been able to get to Peking and the port towns, they would not 
 
 * It should be observed, however, that occasional Europeans con- 
 tinued to reach India by this route during the fifteenth century. 
 Towards 1440 the Venetian Nicolo Conti visited Malabar and may even 
 have gone to China, of which he gives several accurate particulars, 
 and in 1483 another Venetian and a Milanese crossed Persia and sailed 
 from Ormuz to Cambay. Grousset, op. cit., iii, p. 137. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 153 
 
 have been received there. The conquests of Timur completed 
 a process already almost complete before he came. 
 
 That great conqueror might, indeed, had he lived to complete 
 his project of subduing China, have re-established something 
 analagous to the empire of Kublai Khan, though it would have 
 been an ardently Muslim empire and thus probably unfriendly 
 to direct access by Christian merchants to the East. But 
 he pillaged Baghdad and Shiraz and in his campaigns, to 
 render safe his own Trans-Oxianian realm and to make 
 Samarcand the greatest trading centre of the East, he ravaged 
 the country to the North and destroyed Tana, Sarai, 
 Astrakhan, Urgenje and Almalik, and fatally interrupted the 
 caravan route on which they were stages, while his death 
 threw Higher Asia into an anarchy which still further cut 
 off West from East. Two European travellers have, indeed, 
 left us accounts of Eastern journeys in the time of Timur. 
 One, the Spaniard Clavijo, was sent on a mission to the 
 conqueror’s court by Henry of Castile in 1403, and travelled 
 by way of Trebizond, Tabriz, Sultaniyah (a splendid mart, 
 to which he notes that the traders of the West, ‘aye, of Venice 
 and of Genoa,’ were still able to make their way from Kaffa, 
 Trebizond or Syria), Nishapur, Meshed and the Oxus to 
 Samarcand. He has left an extraordinarily vivid picture of 
 Timur and his court and of the prosperity of Samarcand, and 
 from a camel driver, who had come with the Peking caravan 
 of 800 camels to the city, he learned something of Cathay. 
 The other traveller of this age is Schiltberger, a German 
 taken captive and enslaved first by the Ottoman Sultan 
 Bajazet, then by Bajazet’s conqueror Timur, and then by 
 other Tartar princes, whose Reisebuch recounts his enforced 
 wanderings (1396-1425) in the lands of the Levant and Black 
 Sea and Trans-Oxiana, leaving among other things a very 
 good picture of Kaffa, and having a peculiar interest of its 
 own because, alone among the medieval travel books, it is 
 the work of an under-dog, a poor slave who picked up his 
 knowledge from under-dogs like himself.+ 
 
 But Clavijo and Schiltberger are truly, as Professor Beazley 
 calls them, anachronisms. They are writing the sad 
 epilogue to a splendid age of travel which has passed away ; 
 
 1 For Clavijo and Schiltberger see Beazley, op. cit., iii, pp. 332-81. 
 The works of both have been published by the Hakluyt Society. 
 
154 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 China and India were hid from them; they penetrated no 
 further than Samarcand along the once open trade route 
 and must pick up from camel drivers and the dregs of Timur’s 
 camp their knowledge of the great worlds which lay beyond. 
 After Timur’s death fanaticism ruled in Persia, anarchy in 
 Central Asia, an anti-foreign dynasty in China. So the East 
 was hidden once more from European eyes, and the teeming 
 peoples, the crowding junks, the rich civilization, were no 
 more than a legend to incite the adventurers of a later age, 
 when they sought the road to India and Cathay again. 
 For the closing of the routes and the triumph of the Turks 
 threw Europeans into an increasing dependence upon the 
 Egyptian road and the terminus at Alexandria, beyond 
 which they might never pass. Useless now to dream of taking 
 the road for Ormuz at Lajazzo or Trebizond; useless to 
 gather dragomen and set out from Kaffa or Tana. If they 
 would reach the lands of which Marco Polo wrote, they must 
 seek a new road, not by the East but by the West, not by 
 land but by sea. The failure of the great Tartar epic is 
 intimately connected with the epics of Vasco da Gama and 
 Columbus. 
 
 But looking back upon this episode, so marvellous, even 
 if it was so brief, does it not bear witness to the injustice of 
 many commonly received historical judgments? History 
 gives to the fifteenth century the name of the ‘Age of 
 Discovery ’, because its discoveries were never lost. But 
 are Vasco da Gama and Columbus himself more remarkable 
 than Marco Polo, or than those half forgotten friars and wholly 
 forgotten merchants, who took the land and sea roads to 
 India and Cathay in the century between 1245 and 13845 ? 
 History, again, commonly represents the Tartars as mere 
 barbarians, unintelligent and savage ravagers like the Huns, 
 seeking to tear down the painfully reared civilization of Islam 
 and the West, and the man in the street has gone even further 
 than history ; the phrase ‘to catch a Tartar’ has become 
 proverbial. 
 
 The truth is that popular opinion persists in remembering 
 only the early onslaughts of the Tartars, the first period of 
 destruction under the four Great Khans, Chinghiz, Ogotay, 
 Kuyuk and Mangu (1206-57), and erects into an historical 
 verdict the objurgations of Muslim or Christian writers like 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 155 
 
 Ibnu’l-Athir and Matthew Paris, writing under the stress 
 of the first invasions, and often enough writing from hearsay. 
 The honest Matthew never saw a Tartar in his life, nor was 
 Ibnu’l-Athir a witness of the horrors which he so vividly 
 describes. It is true that the early invasions were orgies of 
 the most barbarous slaughter, but is it fair to pass judgment 
 on the Tartars on the witness of these alone? After all what 
 were the Europeans of the day but descendants of those 
 Germanic barbarians, whose first invasions were described, and 
 deserved to be described, in precisely the same terms by the 
 Roman provincials upon whom they fell? No conquering 
 people can fairly be condemned on the period of its conquests 
 and by the mouths of the conquered. It is inthe subsequent 
 period of settled government that it proves its true greatness 
 or baseness, and few imperial nations of to-day would care 
 for any other criterion. The Tartars deserve to be judged, 
 not in their nomad state and in the first age of the invasions, 
 but as they were when settled in their four great Khanates. 
 They deserve to be judged as a people so tolerant that they 
 welcomed the representatives of all religions, Christian friar, 
 Buddhist lama, Jewish rabbi, Muslim doctor and Mongol 
 medicine-man, equally at their courts, and were regarded by 
 Christians not as ‘ the worst enemies of human civilization ’ 
 but as potential allies against Islam. The fact that the 
 alliance did not éventuate was due not to the Tartars but 
 to the internecine bickering of Christian Popes and monarchs. 
 They deserve to be judged as the one political power under 
 whom the Armenians, always from that day to this persecuted 
 by the Turks and never from that day to this helped by the 
 Christians, enjoyed a momentary tranquillity, a respite in 
 the long crucifixion of their history. They deserve to be 
 judged as the power whose policy towards commercial 
 intercourse between nations was so enlightened that they 
 welcomed traders, lowered dues and-protected caravans and 
 roads throughout their dominions, maintaining free inter- 
 course over the length and breadth of Asia, so that Professor 
 
 1 Matthew Paris’ famous account of the Tartars in the Chronicle, 
 under the year 1240, may be found conveniently translated in 
 Matihew Paris’ English History, trans. J. A. Giles (Bohn’s Antiq. 
 Lib., 1852), i, pp. 312-14. Ibnu’l-Athir’s account, under the years 
 1220-1 and 1230-1 is translated in E. G. Browne, A Literary History 
 of Persia (1906), li, pp. 427-31. 
 
156 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Beazley can with justice call this period ‘ the age of the nomad 
 peace’ and Sir Henry Howorth, speaking of this marvellous 
 bringing together of the peoples of West and East can write 
 ‘I have no doubt myself... that the art of printing, 
 the mariner’s compass, firearms and a great many details of 
 social life, were not discovered in Europe, but imported by 
 means of Mongol influence from the furthest East’. 
 
 Indeed, the question whether the Tartars were, or were not, 
 the mere enemies of civilization is most properly answered 
 by the consideration of what befel the old civilizations of 
 Persia and China after the establishment of their rule, and it is 
 a remarkable fact that, once the destruction of the first age 
 of conquest was over, both countries were able not only to 
 preserve their characteristic civilizations but to create new 
 wisdom and beauty under Tartar domination. The great 
 scholar and lover of Islam, Professor Browne, describes the 
 Mongol invasion as ‘one of the most dreadful calamities 
 which ever befel the human race’!; but he has to devote a 
 whole volume to Persian literature alone under Tartar 
 dominion, and his final judgment is that, allowing for the 
 sufferings of Persia during the invasions, ‘the period of 
 Mongol ascendency (1265-1337) . . . was wonderfully rich 
 in literary achievements.’ Nor is it after all so wonderful, 
 for the Ilkhans encouraged the study of the natural sciences 
 and of history and were by no means indifferent to poetry. 
 ‘Even Hulagu Khan, the destroyer of Baghdad and deadly 
 foe of Islam,’ says Professor Browne ‘ was the patron of two 
 of the greatest Persian writers of this period, the astronomer 
 Nasiru’d-Din of Tus and the historian ‘Ata Malik of Juwayn, 
 author of the ‘‘ History of the Conqueror of the World ”’ i.e. 
 Chingiz Khan. Two other historians, ‘Abdu’llah b. Fadlu 
 lah of Shiraz, better known as Wassaf-i-Hadrat and the Wazir 
 Rashidu’d-Din Fadlu’llah, both of whom flourished in the 
 reign of Ghazan Khan (1295-1804) must certainly be ranked 
 among the greatest of those who have written in the Persian 
 language on this important branch of knowledge. Persian 
 literature, indeed, in the narrower sense, can hardly be said 
 to have suffered permanently from the Mongol invasion, 
 
 1 E. G. Browne, Hist. of Persian Literature under Tartar Dominion, 
 1265-1502 (Cambridge, 1920), p. 4. 
 2 Ibid., p. 17. 
 
ROUTES TO CATHAY 157 
 
 since three of the greatest and most famous poets of 
 Persia, Sa‘di of Shiraz, Faridu’d-Din ‘Attar, and Jalalu’d-Din 
 Rumi were contemporary with it, and many other most 
 famous poets were subsequent to it’.1 Moreover, not only 
 literature but also art and architecture flourished under the 
 Tartars. It was during their period that the first illustrated 
 books appeared in Persia, and the influence of the close 
 relations which existed between China and Persia under their 
 rule is shown in the blue and shining tiles of the Persian 
 mosques of this period, and the carpets in which clouds and 
 golden pheasants and dragons of China are mingled with 
 purely Persian designs.2 Similarly under the Tartar or 
 Ytian dynasty in China, literature and the arts flourished 
 with a brilliance worthy of the great Chinese dynasties which 
 had gone before. In literature the novel and the drama both 
 date from this period, and in art a galaxy of famous painters, 
 among whom the most eminent was Chao Meng-fu, adorned 
 the age, many of them rising to high office under the Ytian 
 emperors.? Moreover, just as Chinese influences appear in the 
 Persian art of the period, Persian influences are manifest in 
 Yiian potteries, which are justly prized for their beauty, and 
 the art of enamelling was introduced into China by Persians. 
 But the adaptability which the Tartars showed to the older 
 and more advanced civilizations which fell under their sway 
 is perhaps most remarkably manifested in the rulers whom 
 they produced. Who is not conscious of ‘that humane 
 great monarch’s golden look’ which seems to shed a glow 
 over Marco Polo’s page? Kublai Khan was a king 
 worthy to rank among the wisest of his age, not merely a 
 great conqueror but a great ruler. In Persia the Tartars, 
 but three generations after the conquest, produced the great 
 Ilkhan Ghazan, reformer of administration and_ justice, 
 
 1 E.G. Browne, Literary History of Persia (1906), li, p. 443. He adds, 
 however, that the destruction of Baghdad as the metropolis of Islam 
 struck a fatal blow at the semblance of unity among the Muhammadan 
 nations and also at the prestige and status in Persia of the Arabic 
 language. 
 
 2 See some suggestive remarks on this subject in Grousset, op. cit., 
 ili, pp. 146-52. 
 
 ’ Among others were Li K‘an, Kao K‘o-kung, Huang Kung-wang, 
 Wang Méng, Ni Tsan, Wu Chén and Yen Hui. See Giles, Inirod. to 
 the Hist. of Chinese Pictorial Avi (2nd. ed., Shanghai, 1918), ch. vi, 
 passim. 
 
158 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 protector of the peasantry, promoter of science, learning, and 
 architecture, who made Rashidu’d-Din his chief minister, 
 received envoys from China, India, Egypt, Spain, England, 
 and many other nations at his court, and was mourned 
 throughout Persia when he died. To crown all, the Tartars 
 had a share in producing one of the greatest lines of 
 monarchs who have ruled in the world’s history, the Great 
 Mughals of India, for Baber’s mother was a Tartar princess, 
 the last descendant of the Chagatai Khans, and his father, 
 the King of Ferghana, was descended from the third son of 
 Timur. If we would seek a European parallel to the 
 Tartars, both in their early barbarity and in their subsequent 
 power of adapting themselves to higher civilizations, it is 
 perhaps to be found in the Northmen, against whom men 
 prayed, when first they appeared as Viking raiders, * From 
 the fury of the Northmen good Lord deliver us!’ and who 
 subsequently, as Normans, built up great civilizations in 
 Normandy, England and Sicily. But the Normans were more 
 fortunate ; they were not an episode; they survived, and in 
 history nothing succeeds like success. 
 
 The century 1245 to 1345 was indeed an heroic age in the 
 history of travel and an epoch in the relations of East and 
 West. But while we give our wonder and admiration to 
 William of Rubruck, Marco Polo, John of Monte Corvino 
 and the other travellers who first made Asia known to 
 Kurope in this brief and marvellous episode, let us not forget 
 that it was solely and entirely due to the Tartars that they 
 were able to do so, and let us modify in our own minds, if 
 not indeed reverse, the unjust verdict by which history has 
 too often ungratefully condemned them. For if the world 
 had not caught a Tartar in the thirteenth century, it would 
 have been the poorer for a legacy of imperishable courage 
 and romance. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 i. ‘* TRAVELLERS’ TALES OF WONDER AND 
 IMAGINATION ”’ 
 
 li. EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS IN AFRICA IN THE 
 MiIpDLE AGES 
 
 By Professor ARTHUR PERCIVAL NEWTON 
 
 ANE one surveys the world of the earlier middle ages, one 
 
 cannot fail to note the comparatively narrow area that 
 was clear and familiar to Latin Christendom and how it was 
 hemmed in on all sides by the mists of the unknown. Its 
 western shores were bounded by the dangers of the 
 unnavigable ocean, the north was closed with ice and the 
 regions of perpetual darkness, to the east there lay the vast 
 spaces of the steppes, dreaded as the lands whence again and 
 again for 1,000 years there had surged forth devastating 
 hordes of Scyths and Alans, Huns and Tartars to sweep down 
 upon the peoples of Christendom with fire and sword. Only 
 southward could men look out upon dangers that they under- 
 stood from the lands of the infidel, but even there only the 
 fringe of the Muslim lands was seen clearly, and beyond them 
 again the haze closed down once more upon the torrid sands 
 of the unknown desert. Civilized men seemed to live in the 
 one bright spot in a shrouded world and, lacking knowledge, 
 they imagined around them wonders of all kinds. 
 
 Our concern in these pages is mainly with the authentic 
 travels of the time, but these cannot appear in their true 
 setting unless we say something also of the marvels that 
 abound in the ‘“ travellers’ tales’? of the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries and that had a compelling influence 
 upon the explorers of the Great Age. In an earlier chapter 
 reference was made to the Travels of *‘ Sir John de Mandeville ”’ 
 
160 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 as illustrating the general equipment of geographical ideas 
 of the late fourteenth century, but the extracts there given 
 were so reasonable in character as to fail to do justice to the 
 extraordinary character of the work. Though achieving great 
 popularity in its own day and long accepted as an authentic 
 and valuable record of travel, we now know that it was a 
 spurious compilation of a citizen of Liege, one Jehan 
 d’Outremuse, fathered upon a fictitious English knight 
 “‘ Sire Jehan de Mandeville’? much as Swift invented the 
 imaginary Lemuel Gulliver to convey his satires. The 
 stories with which the book is filled were culled from every 
 kind of source from the authentic narratives of Friar Oderic of 
 Pordenone or John de Piano Carpine to the ancient fables of 
 Pliny and Solinus collected from the encyclopedic works of 
 Vincent of Beauvais. The result is hopelessly inconsistent 
 with any clear system of geography, but it peopled the mists 
 surrounding Christendom with astonishing wonders such as 
 the average reader in any age loves, and there were no means 
 available for the disentangling of the true wonders from the 
 false. Both made an equal appeal and had an equal aspect 
 of reality. 
 
 Let us compare for example the accounts of some real and 
 some unreal beasts. ‘“* In the isle of Taprobane be great hills 
 of gold that pissemyres |[i.e. ants] keep full diligently, and 
 they fine the pured gold and cast away the unpured. And 
 these pissemyres be great as hounds so that no man dare 
 come to those hills, for the pissemyres would assail him and 
 devour him anon, so that no man may get of that gold but by 
 great sleight. And, therefore, when it is great heat, the 
 pissemyres rest them from prime of the day unto noon. And 
 then the folk of the country take camels, dromedaries and 
 horses, and other beasts, and go thither, and charge them 
 in all haste that they may... In that desert be many 
 wild men that be hideous to look on, for they be horned and 
 they speak nought, but they grunt as pigs. And there be 
 many popinjays that they yclepe psitakes ! in their language. 
 And they speak of their proper nature and salute men that 
 go through the deserts, and speak to them as pertly as though 
 it wereaman. And they that speak well have a large tongue 
 and have five toes upon a foot. And there be also of other 
 
 1 psittaci = parrots. 
 
TRAVELLERS’ TALES 161 
 
 manner, that have but three toes upon a foot, and they speak 
 not or but little, for they cannot but cry. Jn that country 
 and by all Ind be great plenty of ‘ cokodrilles’, that is a 
 manner of a long serpent, and in the night they dwell in the 
 water and on the day upon the land in rocks and in caves. 
 And they eat no meat in all the winter, but they lie as in a 
 dream, as do the serpents. These serpents slay men and 
 they eat them weeping. And when they eat, they move 
 the overjaw and nought the nether jaw, and they have no 
 tongue. There also be many beasts that be yclept ‘ orafles ’,? 
 in Araby they be yclept ‘ gerfaunts’ that is a beast pomely 
 or spotted, that is little more high than a steed. But he hath 
 a neck a twenty cubits long. And his crupper and his tail 
 is as of a hart and he may look over a great high house. 
 And there be also in that country many ‘ camles’,? and he 
 liveth by the air and he eateth nought nor drinketh nought 
 at no time. And he changeth his colour oftentime. For 
 men see him often now in one colour and now in another 
 colour, and he may change him into all manner colours that 
 him list, save only into red and white . . . And here be also of 
 other beasts as great or more greater than is a destrier,3 
 and men yclept them ‘loeranez’ and some yclept them 
 “odenthos’. And they have a black head and three long 
 horns trenchant in the front, sharp as a sword and the body 
 is slender; and he is a full felonous beast, and he chaseth 
 and slayeth the ‘ oliphant’ ’’.4 
 
 It was as impossible for the medieval reader to distinguish 
 the true from the false in such tales as these, as it would be 
 for ourselves unless by experience we had learned to do so. 
 The *“‘ odenthos ”’ is no more incredible and “ pissemyres ”’ 
 very little more than are the giraffe and the chameleon, 
 but others of Mandeville’s tales must have been a hard test 
 for even the most credulous medieval reader. As an example 
 we may quote the story of the growing diamonds, a hardy 
 survival from the fables of antiquity. “‘ Men find many 
 time hard diamonds in a mass that cometh out of gold when 
 they pure it and fine it out of the mine when men break 
 
 1 Giraffes. 
 
 2 Chameleons. 
 
 3 War horse. 
 
 4 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. Hamelius, i, pp. 192, 193, 200. 
 
 M 
 
162 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 that mass in small pieces. And sometime it happeneth that 
 men find some as great as a pea and some less and they be 
 all as hard as those of Ind. And albeit that men find good 
 diamonds in Ind, yet natheless men find them more commonly 
 upon the rocks in the sea and upon hills where the mine of gold 
 is. And they grow many together, one little, another great... 
 and they be square and pointed of their own kind both above 
 and beneath without working of man’s hand. And they 
 grow together male and female, and they be nourished with 
 the dew of heaven; and they engender children commonly 
 and bring forth small children that multiply and grow all the 
 year. I have often times assayed that if a man keep them 
 with a little of the rock, and with the May dew oft sithes 
 they shall grow every year and the small will wax great. 
 For right as the fine pearl congealeth and waxeth great of 
 the dew of heaven, so doeth the very diamond. And right as 
 the pearl of his own kind taketh roundness, right so the 
 diamond by virtue of God taketh squareness.”’ 1 
 
 In the mists of the Western Ocean, too, the middle ages 
 imagined marvels. There lay islands that eluded those who 
 sought them, but none of the stories of the geographers 
 were more persistent or more generally accepted. The 
 most celebrated of these islands were those of Saint Brandan, 
 the Seven Cities, Brasil and Antilia, and again and again 
 during the fifteenth and even the sixteenth centuries grants 
 for their discoveries were sought and obtained from the 
 Portuguese monarchs. It was said that in the year 565 
 after Christ the Irish Saint Brandan came with his ship to a 
 certain island in the Atlantic where he beheld many marvels, 
 and after living there for seven years he returned to his own 
 country. Though it could never be found again, its existence 
 was firmly believed, and it was marked on even the most 
 scientific maps for centuries. As late as 1755 St. Brandan’s 
 Isle was placed 5° to the west of the Canaries, and maps even 
 of the nineteenth century can be found recording it. 
 Honorius of Autun in his geographical treatise of a.p. 1180 
 described it thus : “* There is in the Ocean a certain isle agreeable 
 and fertile beyond all others, unknown to men but discovered 
 by chance and then sought for without anyone being able 
 to find it again and so called the “ Lost Isle”. It was, so 
 
 2 Tbid., ij 205. 
 
TRAVELLERS’ TALES 163 
 
 they say, the island whither once upon a time St. Brandan 
 Caine, 
 
 The story of the island of the Seven Cities was told by 
 medieval writers with great wealth of detail and even more 
 firmly believed. At the time of the conquest of Spain 
 by the Moors—it was said—after the defeat and disappearance 
 of King Roderick, seven bishops took ship with their followers 
 and sailed out into the ocean. After a long voyage they 
 landed on an unknown island and there, having burned 
 their ships, they settled. Each of them built himself a 
 dwelling place for himself and his flock, and so the island came 
 to be called the “ Island of the Seven Cities’’. Even in the 
 time of Prince Henry the Navigator the tradition was fully 
 credited and a Portuguese captain came to the Prince with a 
 story that he had found the island, but had been forced by 
 its inhabitants to flee because they refused to have any 
 communication with the ancient fatherland. “ The prince ”’ 
 says Ferdinand Columbus, “ blamed [the captain and his 
 sailors] severely, and ordered them to return to the island, 
 to stay there for a time and to come again and report to him 
 what they had seen. The men, struck with terror, betook 
 them to their ship and sailed away and never appeared again 
 in Portugal. Among other details [of their adventure] 
 they related that their cabin boys who had brought away 
 from the beach of the island some sand to clean their cooking 
 pots, found that that sand was two-thirds composed of 
 fine gold.” # 
 
 Among the islands said to be situated in the far Western 
 Ocean many medieval writers placed the Terrestrial Paradise, 
 and this legend had so much influence on the minds of the 
 first explorers of the new lands that it is of some importance. 
 The idea of such a region is constant in Christian writers 
 from the time of the early fathers Tertullian and St. 
 Ambrose through Isidore of Seville down to Bonaventura 
 and Thomas Aquinas, but though they agree upon many 
 of the aspects of such a paradise they differ widely as to its 
 situation. Cosmas, writing in the sixth century, tells us that 
 
 1 P. Gaffarel, Histoire de la découverte de l Amérique avant Colomb 
 (Paris, 1892), i, 205. 
 
 2 History of the Life and Actions of Adm. Christopher Columbus 
 
 written by his son T. Ferdinand Columbus in Churchill’s Voyages, 
 (London, 1732). 
 
164 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 ‘“‘The earth is divided into two parts by the sea that is 
 called Ocean ; the one is the part that we live in and the 
 other beyond the Ocean is that which is joined to heaven. 
 Men lived in that land before the Deluge ; there also Paradise 
 is situated ’’.1 | 
 
 The writer of Mandeville places the Terrestrial Paradise 
 so far in the east that it is also at the extremest end of the west, 
 for, as he says, ‘“‘ The Lord God made the earth all round in 
 the mid place of the firmament.”’ He does not claim to have 
 been there, but professes to describe it as he has heard say 
 of wise men of old. ‘‘ Paradise terrestre, as wise men say, 
 is the highest place of earth that is in all the world, and it is 
 so high that it toucheth nigh to the circle of the moon, there 
 as the moon maketh her turn. For she is so high that the 
 flood of Noé might not come to her that would have covered 
 all the earth of the world all about and above and beneath 
 save paradise alone . . . In the most high place of paradise, 
 even in the middle place, is a well that casteth out the four 
 floods that run by divers lands ... And by the rivers may 
 no man go, for the water runneth so rudely and so sharply 
 because that it cometh down so outrageously from the high 
 places above, that it runneth in so great waves that no ship 
 may not row nor sail against it. And the water roareth so 
 and maketh so huge noise and so great tempest that no man 
 hear other in the ship, though he cried with all the craft 
 that he could with the highest voice that he might.” 2 Again 
 the pseudo-Mandeville tells us in another passage ® that the 
 Fountain of Eternal Youth springs from the Terrestial 
 Paradise. ‘“‘ There is a fair well and a great that hath odour 
 and savour of all spices; and at every hour of the day he 
 changeth his odour and his savour diversely. And whoso 
 drinketh three times fasting of that water of that well, he 
 is whole of all manner sickness that he hath, and they that 
 dwell there and drink often of that well they never have 
 sickness, and they seem always young . . . Some men yclepe 
 it the well of youth . . . and men say that that well cometh 
 out of paradise and therefore it is so virtuous.”’ 
 
 It would be of great interest to explore the persistence 
 
 1 Cosmas, ed. McCrindle (Hakluyt Society, 1897), p. 33. 
 2 Mandeville’s Travels, i, 202-3. 
 he 13's (oom ae it 
 
TRAVELLERS’ TALES 165 
 
 of the ideas of the Terrestrial Paradise and the Fountain 
 of Eternal Youth in the minds of explorers like Ponce de Leon 
 who sought the fountain in Florida at the beginning of the 
 sixteenth century, and the sailors of the mid-eighteenth who 
 poetically spoke of the island of Otaheite as Le Paradis 
 Terrestre. But it would be beyond our scope and the 
 quotation of a characteristic passage representing the typical 
 medieval cosmogony of Columbus must suffice. His third 
 voyage having resulted in his discovery of continental land 
 he wrote to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella on his return 
 to Hispaniola in October, 1498, to tell them of what he had 
 found. In the course of this letter from which we have 
 already quoted,! occurs the following remarkable passage :— 
 
 ““T have come to [the] conclusion respecting the earth, 
 that it is not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear, 
 which is very round except where the stalk grows, at which 
 part it is most prominent, or like a round ball, upon one part 
 of which is a prominence like a woman’s nipple, this protrusion 
 being the highest and nearest the sky, situated under the 
 equinoctial line, and at the eastern extremity of this sea 
 [ie. the Caribbean] ...I do not suppose that the 
 earthly paradise is in the form of a rugged mountain, as the 
 descriptions of it have made it appear, but that it is on the 
 summit of the spot, which I have described as being in the 
 form of the stalk of a pear ; the approach to it from a distance 
 must be by a constant and gradual ascent; but I believe 
 that no one could ever reach the top ... From the gulf 
 to which I gave the name of the Gulf of Pearls? the water 
 runs constantly with great impetuosity towards the east, 
 and this is the cause why there is so fierce a turmoil from the 
 fresh water encountering the water of the sea...I 
 think that the water may proceed from the paradise, though 
 it be far off, and that stopping at the place which I have just 
 left, it forms a lake. There are great indications of this being 
 the terrestrial paradise, for its site coincides with the opinion 
 of the holy and wise theologians St. Isidore, Bede, Strabus, 
 the master of scholastic history, St. Ambrose and Scotus, 
 all of whom agree that the earthly paradise is in the east. 
 And, moreover, the other evidences agree with the supposition, 
 
 t Chapter: Toop 36: 
 2 The modern Gulf of Paria. 
 
1466 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 for I have never either read or heard of fresh water coming 
 in so large a quantity, in close conjunction with the water of 
 the sea ; the idea is also corroborated by the blandness of the 
 temperature . . . That the islands [in the seas] should possess 
 the most costly productions is to be accounted for by the 
 mild temperature, which comes to them from heaven, since 
 these are the most elevated parts of the world.” + 
 
 To the men of the middle ages as to the ancients the 
 continent most abounding in marvels was Africa, and a 
 problem of perennial interest was to account satisfactorily 
 for the regular waxing and waning of the waters of the Nile. 
 Mandeville connects the river with the earthly paradise 
 and gives to it a most extraordinary course, showing how 
 little sure knowledge there was in his time of the lands of the 
 Moors. ‘“ This river cometh running from Paradys terrestre 
 between the deserts of Ind and after it sinks into land and 
 runneth long time many great countries under earth. And 
 after it goeth out under an high hill that men yclepe Aloth 
 that is between Ind and Ethiope...and after it 
 environeth all Ethiope and Morekane and goeth all along 
 from the land of Egypt into the city of Alisandre to the end of 
 Egypt and there it falleth into the sea.” 2 
 
 Libya and Mauretania, the country of desert Africa, were 
 above all to most Europeans the land of marvels, though 
 we shall show later that some men in the Mediterranean 
 cities held a real knowledge of those countries. To quote the 
 fictions of Mandeville again. ‘Between the Red Sea and 
 Ocean sea toward the south is the kingdom of Ethiope and of 
 Libya the higher, the which land of Libya, that is to say 
 Libya the low, that beginneth at the sea of Spain from 
 thence where the pillars of Hercules be, and dureth unto 
 anenst Egypt and toward Ethiope. In that country of 
 Libya is the sea more high than the land, and it seemeth 
 that it would cover the earth, and natheless yet it passeth not 
 his marks ... In that sea of Libya is no fish, for they 
 may not live nor endure for the great heat of the sun, because 
 that the water is evermore boiling for the great heat? ... 
 
 1 Select letters of Columbus, ed. R. H. Major (Hakluyt Society, 1870), 
 PP- 134, 141-2, 144. 
 
 2 Mandeville’s Travels, i, 28. 
 
 * Cf. the ideas of Lambert as discussed in Chap. I supra. 
 
TRAVELLERS’ TALES 167 
 
 The whole party meridional [of Africa] is yclept Moritania 
 and the folk of that country be black ... and they be 
 yclept Moors. In that part is a well that in the day it is so 
 cold that no man may drink thereof, and in the night it is so 
 hot that no man may suffer his hand therein... In that 
 country be folk that have but one foot and they go so blue 
 that it is marvellous. And the foot is so large that it 
 shadoweth all the body against the sun when they would lie 
 and rest them.” 4 
 
 Mandeville abounds in descriptions of anatomical freaks, 
 and much of his popularity may have been due to such strange 
 fables, but he does not always commit himself to their exact 
 geographical situation. ‘‘ In[a certain] isle towards the south 
 dwell folk of foul stature and of cursed kind that have no 
 heads, and their eyes be in their shoulders. And their mouth 
 is crooked as an horse shoe, and that is in the midst of their 
 breast. And in another isle be folk that have the face all 
 flat, all plain without nose and without mouth, but they have 
 two small holes all round instead of their eyes, and their 
 mouth is flat also without lips. And in another isle be folk 
 of foul fashion and shape that have the lip above the mouth 
 so great that when they sleep in the sun, they cover all the 
 face with that lip.” 2 Marvels such as these were the common 
 stock in trade of popular medieval writers on geography, and 
 ridiculous though they may be, they should not be entirely 
 neglected in attempting to realize something of the attitude 
 of mind of the travellers of the time, half critical and half 
 credulous, but not wholly different from that of a later age 
 which, having refused to accept the authentic pygmies and 
 gorillas of Du Chaillu, accepted with hardly a qualm the 
 ** travellers tales ’’ of Louis de Rougemont. 
 
 li. EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS IN AFRICA IN THE 
 MIpDLE AGES 
 
 When we turn from amusing fictions to examine whether 
 Kuropeans had authentic knowledge of the interior of the 
 lands beyond the Moors in the Middle Ages, we find that 
 although it left little trace in literature and has only recently 
 been recovered, some real information had been obtained. 
 
 1 Mandeville’s Travels, i, 96, 104. 
 2 Tbid., i, 133-4. 
 
168 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Just as in the east political circumstances in the latter half 
 of the thirteenth century threw open Central Asia to Kuropean 
 travellers, especially Franciscan and Dominican friars, so 
 about the same period, owing to Muslim toleration, they were 
 able to penetrate for a time into North Africa. Under the 
 dynasty of the Almohade emirs, who ruled over Morocco and 
 Southern Spain in the twelfth century, many Christians were 
 permitted to cross the Straits and settle in cities like Fez, 
 Marrakesh, and Salli. Many Christian contingents served 
 in the Moroccan armies and took part in the almost incessant 
 civil wars. When the Almohades were defeated by the Berber 
 tribe of the Beni Marin and the new dynasty of the Marinides 
 was established, this policy of toleration was continued, 
 especially under the enlightened Emir Yakub II]. From 1225 
 onwards. Franciscans and Dominicans co-operated in 
 establishing Christian bishoprics in Morocco, and in 1256 
 we learn from the works of the missionary Humbert de 
 Romans that the friars for several years, had been preaching 
 in Arabic to the Moors.1 There was some commerce also, 
 and the dates and alum of the south of Morocco on the 
 borders of the desert were carried in the thirteenth century 
 as far north as the fairs of Bruges there to be exchanged for 
 cloth and leather. 
 
 It was from the town of Sigilmessa beyond the main mass 
 of the Atlas Mountains that the caravan routes passed out 
 across the desert to the oases of the Sahara and the more 
 fertile country of the Sudan far to the south. The first 
 European who seems to have penetrated to these regions 
 was an unnamed envoy of a certain cardinal of whom we learn 
 from the writings of Raymond Lully at the end of the 
 thirteenth century. The philosopher travelled much in 
 North Africa in his efforts to convert the Moors and must 
 have been familiar with many merchants engaged in the desert 
 trade: though the Blanquerna, from which we derive our 
 information, is an Utopian romance, M. de la Ronciére 
 believes that it contains passages describing events that 
 actually occurred. Lully tells us that :— 
 
 + M. Ch. de la Ronciére, the learned librarian of the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale, has summed up the knowledge of Africa in the Middle Ages 
 in his work La Découverte de ’ Afrique au Moyen Age, 2 vols., (Cairo, 
 1924-5). 
 
TRAVELLERS’ TALES 169 
 
 “It chanced that [one of the cardinal’s messengers} 
 travelling to the south found a caravan of 6,000 camels 
 loaded with salt which left a town named Tabelbert 1 for the 
 country where the river of Damietta [i.e. the Nile] takes its 
 rise. The richness of that country was so great that he saw 
 all the loads of salt sold in fifteen days. The people there were 
 negroes and idolaters, leading a merry life and severely just. 
 Lying was punished with death. All their goods were held 
 in common. There was then an island in the middle of the 
 lake, and in the island a dragon? honoured by the sacrifices of 
 the natives and adored as god. The messenger went through 
 those lands, inquiring about the local customs and the density 
 of the population to the great astonishment of the people, 
 for he was a white man and a Christian; and in the memory 
 of man no Christian had ever before come into their country. 
 The messenger sent word by one of his squires and in writing 
 to the cardinal who had sent him forth, of all that has here been 
 said and many other things. The cardinal reported it to the 
 Pope and to his colleagues. Great was their disappointment 
 to learn that the dragon was adored as a god, and they devised 
 means to destroy the error in which those peoples lived.”” The 
 place where the caravan disposed of its salt “was in the 
 country of the south, in a region situated in the middle of the 
 sands near toa town named Gana. There there are numerous 
 idolatrous kings and princes who worship the sun and the stars 
 and birds and beasts. The inhabitants of those lands are 
 numerous ; they are of great stature and are negroes ’’. 3 
 
 In an inscription attached to the map or portolan of 
 Giovanni di Carignano which was drawn about 1320 there is 
 further information about the Sahara that bears the stamp of 
 accuracy. The Berbers of the desert, it says, “‘ go with their 
 mouths always covered. They pay no toll to the Saracens. 
 They are loyal merchants and receive the merchandise and 
 money of Sigilmessa to carry them on camel-back to Oualata * 
 and into Guinea. It takes them forty days to reach Oualata 
 through the desert. They carry water and victuals on their 
 
 1 The oasis of Tabelbala. 
 
 2 Probably a sacred crocodile. 
 
 3 Raymond Lully. Blanquerna, chaps. 88 and 91. Quoted by 
 de la Ronciére, op. cit., i, 111-12. 
 
 4 A town in the Western Sudan near the headwaters of the Senegal 
 River. 
 
170 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 camels, for they find neither dwellings of men nor water 
 between those towns. Sometimes they are wrapped in the 
 dust of the sands when they are surprised by a furious wind. 
 Sometimes the heat is so great, when the sun is at its zenith, 
 that they pass blood. I [i.e. the cartographer] have learned 
 all that from a Genoese merchant worthy of belief who lived 
 at Sigilmessa and traded with them.”’ 
 
 Only the most valuable commodities could repay the 
 terrible risks and toils of the desert journey, but the lands 
 beyond the Sahara had access to supplies both of gold dust 
 and ivory, that would yield sufficient profit in the markets of 
 the Mediterranean amply to recoup those who sought them. 
 The land from which the gold dust came was the kingdom of 
 Ghana lying beyond what the ancients called the Western 
 Nile from a vague knowledge of the Senegal and the upper 
 course of the Niger. John Leo Africanus, a Muslim of 
 Spanish origin who wrote an elaborate description of Africa in 
 Arabic at the beginning of the sixteenth century tells us 
 that this land is “called by us [i.e. the Moors] Gheneoa, 
 but by the men of Genoa, Portugal and Europe who have no 
 exact knowledge of it, Ghinea. This kingdom extends 
 along the Niger about 250 miles, of which a part is on 
 the ocean shore. It is called Gualata towards the west, 
 Tombut! on the eastern side and Melli in the part towards 
 the south’’.2 Each of these regions is to be found marked 
 in the beautiful maps that have come down to us from the 
 Jewish cartographers who made Majorca famous in the 
 fourteenth century. Those maps contain much more accurate 
 detail of the geography of Africa than any other European 
 source before the nineteenth century, and this information 
 was available because of the large share that Jews took in the 
 gold trade across the Sahara and their community of interest 
 with their co-religionists on the other side of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Tolerance of Christian residents and travellers among the 
 Moors was only a passing phase, but Jews had lived and 
 flourished in North Africa for centuries without molestation. 
 The Genoese and Venetians made considerable use of Jewish 
 
 1 i.e. Timbuktu. 
 
 * Leo Africanus’ work has often been translated into European lan- 
 guages. Translated into English by John Poryas A geographical historie 
 of Africa written in Avabike and Italian by John Leo a More (London, 
 1600). See also Purchas (Maclehose’s edn.), vols. v and vi. 
 
TRAVELLERS’ TALES 171 
 
 intermediaries in their attempts to secure a share of the 
 valuable trade, but though we know that they achieved 
 some measure of success, the traces that have been left are 
 tantalizingly few. M. de la Ronciére has, however, recently 
 brought to light a narrative of travel into the Sahara in the 
 middle of the fifteenth century which shows what strenuous 
 efforts the Genoese were making to cultivate new fields of 
 commerce to replace those of the Black Sea that were being 
 ruined by the Turks. 
 
 Antonio Malfante, the author, was probably a Genoese 
 in the employ of a merchant house that desired to find 
 opportunities for trade in Africa, and in 1447 having travelled 
 further into the heart of the desert than any Christian before 
 him, he wrote from the large oasis of Touat to inform his 
 employers of the knowledge he had gained concerning the 
 caravan trade and the rich countries along the Niger whence 
 came the gold and ivory. The letter is long and full of 
 interesting details,1 but only a few extracts can here be 
 summarized. ‘‘ After we were come from the sea that is to say 
 from Honein [to Sigilmessa],”’ Malfante begins, “‘ we travelled 
 for twelve days always towards the south in mounted caravan. 
 - . - SO we came after that stage into the Touat. The place 
 where we are 2 comprises eighteen quarters enclosed within a 
 single wall, and governed by the power of an oligarchy 
 {composed of the chiefs of the various quarters]. Travellers 
 are taken under the protection of one of these chiefs, and so 
 merchants find themselves in complete security. For I am 
 a Christian and yet no one has ever said an unfriendly word 
 to me. They have never before seen a Christian here. . 
 Jews abound here, living peaceably in dependence on different 
 masters who defend them. Business is carried on through 
 their agency and there are many in whom one may have 
 great confidence . . . The gold that is brought here is bought 
 of those who come from the coast. . . . In the country of the 
 negroes here there live the Philistines,? who camp in tents 
 like the Arabs and reign as masters over all the lands from 
 
 1 It is printed in the original Latin with a translation and a facsimile 
 of certain pages in Ch. de la Ronciére, Découverte de l’A frique, i, 151-8. 
 See also dela Ronciére, Découverte d’une relation de voyage, décrivant en 
 1447 le bassin du Niger (Paris, 1919). 
 
 * Tamentit, the capital of the oasis. 
 3 i.e. Touaregs. 
 
172 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 the confines of Egypt to the Ocean. . . . These white men 
 are of a superb race and high countenance, and are 
 incomparable horsemen who ride without saddles and with 
 simple spurs. They have their mouths and noses covered 
 with a veil. ... The lands that are under their dominion 
 are on the borders of the lands of the negroes and the 
 inhabitants follow the religion of Mahomet. The greater part 
 of these people are negroes, but a small number are white 
 men.’ ! Among other Mahometan states are Thambet 
 [i.e. Timbuktu], Mali, Sagoto [Sokoto], and Bamba, and these 
 are enumerated from east to west ascending the course of the 
 river. 
 
 “'To the south of the states there are many states and 
 territories solely inhabited by idolatrous negroes, incessantly 
 at war one with another to sustain their beliefs and their 
 fetishes. . . . They worship tufted trees, the dwelling-place 
 of a spirit whom they honour with sacrifices ;. others worship 
 wooden and stone images to whom, they say, their incantations 
 give speech. My lord here who is sheik of this land . . . is 
 brother of a great merchant in Thambet and very worthy of 
 belief. He relates that he lived in that place thirty years ; 
 and my protector, as he says, stayed in the lands of the 
 negroes for fourteen years, and every day he tells me marvels 
 about those people. He says that those lands and peoples 
 have no end towards the south. They all go naked only 
 covering themselves with a little apron. They have 
 abundance of flesh, milk and rice, but no wheat or barley. 
 
 ‘A very great river flows through those lands and at a 
 certain time of the year it pours its floods over the lands, 
 that river passes at the gates of Tambet and runs through 
 Egypt, and it is the river which passes through Cairo.? 
 They have upon it many barks in which they carry on their 
 commerce. . . . Because battles are incessant among them 
 they sell men into slavery at a maximum rate of two 
 doubloons per head. . . . The place where I am is good, for 
 Keyptians and other merchants come hither from the lands 
 of the negroes bringing gold which they exchange for copper 
 and other merchandise . . . I have often asked where the 
 
 1 Men of Moorish, i.e., Berber stock. 
 * This confusion of the Niger and the Nile was constant until the 
 discoveries of the nineteenth century. 
 
TRAVELLERS’ TALES 173 
 
 gold is found and collected, but my protector says ‘I have 
 stayed fourteen years in the lands of the negroes, and I have 
 never heard of nor seen any one who could speak of it with 
 certain knowledge. Wherefore it must be thought that it 
 comes from a far-off land, and according to my belief from 
 one particular place’. Nevertheless, he said that once he 
 was in a place where silver was worth as much as gold.” 
 
 The whole of Malfante’s letter bears the stamp of accuracy 
 and is of absorbing interest, but its importance arises especially 
 from the date at which it was written, for the years 
 immediately following 1447, as we shall see in a later chapter, 
 are an important epoch in the work of exploration of the 
 African coast by the Portuguese under the leadership of 
 Prince Henry the Navigator. Many Genoese sailors and 
 merchants took part in that work, and though we have no 
 proof that Malfante’s information was accessible or known to 
 the Infante, there can be no doubt that in the middle of the 
 fifteenth century much more accurate information was coming 
 to the Peninsula concerning the lands beyond the Moors than 
 had been available at an earlier date. Through the Jews 
 of Aragon and Majorca, the Moors of the captured cities of 
 the Barbary Coast and possibly through Genoese and 
 Venetian merchants who had traded in the interior, knowledge 
 about the gold trade was brought, and the veil that covered 
 the Dark Continent was lifted higher than it was ever to be 
 again until centuries later. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 PRESTER JOHN AND THE EMPIRE OF ETHIOPIA 
 
 By Sir E. DENISON Ross, C.I.E., Ph.D. 
 
 eo documentary history of the legend of a great 
 
 Christian priest-king ruling far away beyond the lands 
 usually visited by Western travellers dates only from the 
 twelfth century, though it is probable that the story was 
 current in oral tradition much earlier. In the Chronicle of 
 Otto von Freisingen,! written before 1158, there is a story 
 that a few years before the capture of the Crusaders’ citadel 
 of Edessa by the Moslems in 1144, a certain “ Johannes 
 Presbyter ’’ had won a great victory over the Persians and 
 the Medes. This victory has long ago been identified as 
 that won over the Saljuq Sultan Sanjar in 1141 by the Turkish 
 Khan Ye-lu-ta-shih,* and there were good excuses for the 
 report that this Khan was a Christian. Von Freisingen had 
 heard of this victory from the Syrian Bishop of Gabala on the 
 coast of Syria whom he happened to meet in Viterbo in 1144. 
 The bishop also told him that “ Prester John” was the 
 Nestorian king of a country situated in the Far East ; that he 
 was descended from the Magian kings ; and that he possessed 
 fabulous wealth. News of the defeat of Sultan Sanjar may 
 quite easily have reached Europe soon after the event, but 
 we do not hear of any attempt to take advantage of this 
 triumph of supposedly Christian arms. 
 
 About 1165 there was circulated the famous forged letter from 
 Prester John, which represented this monarch as ruling over 
 the three Indias, and described his powers and possessions 
 in the most exaggerated terms. 
 
 ‘John, Priest by the Almighty power of God and the 
 
 1 Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, XX, p. 266. 
 
 2 The actual date of this victory, 1141, is given by Albericus—who 
 
 made use of Otto—but we do not know on what authority. See Mon. 
 Germ. Hist. Scriptores IX, p. 580. 
 
PRESTER JOHN 175 
 
 strength of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord 
 of Lords, to his friend Emmanuel, Prince of Constantinople, 
 greeting, wishing him health and the continued enjoyment 
 of the Divine Favour. 
 
 ‘It hath been reported to our Majesty that thou holdest 
 our Excellency in esteem, and that the knowledge of our 
 highness has reached thee. 
 
 ‘* Furthermore we have heard through our secretary that 
 it was thy desire to send us some objects of art and interest, 
 to gratify our righteous disposition. Being but human we 
 take it in good part, and through our secretary we transmit 
 to thee some of our articles. Now it is our desire and we 
 will to know if thou holdest the true faith, and in all things 
 adherest to our Lord Jesus Christ, for while we know that 
 we are mortal, people regard thee as a god; still we know 
 that thou art mortal, and subject to human infirmities. 
 
 ** If thou shouldst have any desire to come into the kingdom 
 of our majesty, we will place thee in the highest and most 
 dignified position in our household, and thou mayest 
 abundantly partake of all that pertains to us. Shouldst 
 thou desire to return, thou shalt go laden with treasures. 
 If indeed thou desirest to know wherein consists our great 
 power, then believe without hesitation, that I, Prester John, 
 who reign supreme, surpass in virtue, riches and power all 
 creatures under heaven. Seventy kings are our tributaries. 
 Iam a zealous Christian and universally protect the 
 Christians of our empire, supporting them by our alms. 
 We have determined to visit the sepulchre of our Lord with 
 a very large army, in accordance with the glory of our majesty 
 to humble and chastise the enemies of the cross of Christ 
 and to exalt his blessed name. 
 
 ** Honey flows in our land, and milk everywhere abounds. 
 In one region there no poison exists and no noisy frog croaks, 
 no scorpions are there, and no serpents creeping in the grass. 
 
 ‘*“ No venomous reptiles can exist there or use there their 
 deadly power. In one of the heathen provinces flows a river 
 called the Indus, which, issuing from Paradise, extends its 
 windings by various channels through all the province ; 
 and in it are found emeralds, sapphires, carbuncles, topazes, 
 chrysolites, onyxes, beryls, sardonyxes, and many other 
 precious stones. 
 
176 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 ‘‘ Between the sandy sea and the aforesaid mountains, 
 is a stone in a plain, of incredible medical virtue which cures 
 Christians or Christian candidates of whatever infirmities 
 afflict them, in this manner. There is in the stone a mussel- 
 shaped cavity, in which the water is always four inches deep, 
 and this is kept by two holy and reverend old men. These 
 ask the new-comers whether they are Christians, or do 
 desire to be so, and then if they desire the healing of the whole 
 body, and if the answer is satisfactory, having laid aside 
 their clothes they get into the shell; then if their profession 
 is sincere, the water begins to increase and rises over their 
 heads ; this having taken place three times, the water returns 
 to its usual height. Thus every one who enters, leaves it 
 cured of whatsoever disease he had. 
 
 ‘.For gold, silver, precious stones, animals of every kind 
 and the number of our people, we believe there is not our 
 equal under heaven. There are no poor among us; we 
 receive all strangers and wayfarers ; thieves and robbers find 
 no place among us, neither adultery nor avarice. When we 
 go to war, we have carried before us fourteen golden crosses 
 ornamented with precious jewels, in the place of banners, 
 and each of these is followed by ten thousand mounted 
 troopers and a hundred thousand infantry; besides those 
 who are charged with the care of the baggage, carriages and 
 provisions. | 
 
 ‘* Flattery finds no place ; there is no division among us; 
 our people have abundance of wealth ; our horses are few and 
 wretched. We believe we have no equal in the abundance 
 of riches and numbers of people. When we go out at ordinary 
 times on horseback, our Majesty is preceded by a wooden 
 cross, without decoration or gold or jewels, in order that we 
 may always bear in mind the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Also a golden vase full of earth to remind us that our body 
 must return to its original substance—the earth. There is 
 also a silver vase filled with gold borne before us, that all may 
 understand that we are Lord of Lords. Our magnificence 
 abounds in all wealth, and surpasses that of India. 
 
 **'The palace in which our sublimity dwells, is after the 
 pattern of that which the holy Thomas erected for the king 
 Gundoforo, and resembles it in its various offices, and 
 everything in the other parts of the edifice. The ceilings, 
 
PRESTER JOHN 177 
 
 pillars and architraves are of rarest wood. The roof of the 
 same palace indeed is of ebony, lest by any means it might 
 be destroyed by fire or otherwise. At the extremities over 
 the gables, are two golden apples in each of which are two 
 carbuncles, that the gold may shine by day, and the carbuncles 
 sparkle by night. The larger palace gates are of sardonyxes, 
 inlaid with snakes’ horn, so that nothing poisonous may enter. 
 The others indeed are also of ebony. The windows are of 
 crystal. The tables on which our courtiers eat are of gold and 
 some of amethyst. The standards supporting the tables are 
 some of ebony and some of amethyst. In front of the palace 
 is the court in which our justice is accustomed to watch the 
 combatants. The pavement is of onyx, in order that by 
 virtue of the stones the courage of the combatants may be 
 increased. In the aforesaid palace no light is used at night, 
 but what is fed by balsam. The chamber in which our 
 sublimity reposes is marvellously decorated with gold and 
 stones of every kind. 
 
 ‘** At our table, thirty thousand men, besides occasional 
 visitors are daily entertained ; and all there partake of our 
 bounty whether it be for horses or other expenses. The table 
 made of the most precious emeralds is supported by four 
 amethyst pillars ; by virtue of which stone, no person sitting 
 at the table can become inebriated. 
 
 ** Every month we are served in rotation by seven kings, 
 sixty-two dukes, and two hundred and sixty-five counts and 
 marquises, besides those who are sent on various missions in 
 our interest. 
 
 ‘* Twelve archbishops sit on our right at table to meals 
 every day, and twenty bishops on our left. The Patriarch 
 of St. Thomas, the Metropolitan of Samarcand, and the 
 Bishop of Susa, where our glory resides and our imperial 
 palace is, each in his turn is ever present with us. 
 
 “If again thou askest how it is that the Creator of all 
 having made us the most superpotential and most glorious 
 over all mortals—does not give us a higher dignity or more 
 excellent name than that of Priest (Prester), let not thy 
 wisdom be surprised on this account, for this is the reason. 
 We have many ecclesiastics in our retinue of more dignified 
 name and office in the Church, and of more considerable 
 standing than ours in the divine service. For our house- 
 
 N 
 
178 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 steward is a patriarch and king; our cup-bearer is an 
 archbishop and king ; our chamberlain is a bishop and king ; 
 our archimandrite, that is chief pastor or master of the horse, 
 is a king and abbot. Whereof our highness has not seen it 
 repugnant to call himself by the same name and to distinguish 
 himself by the order of which our court is full. And if we 
 have chosen to be called by a lower name and inferior rank, 
 it springs from humility. If indeed you can number the 
 stars of heaven and sands of the sea, then you may calculate 
 the extent of our dominion and power.”’ 
 
 This forged letter, which purports to have been written 
 by Prester John, was in the first instance addressed to 
 Manuel I, Emperor of Byzantium, who in his turn forwarded 
 it to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa.t_ That such a letter 
 should ever have been regarded as genuine is hard for us to 
 believe to-day. But if it was believed, one can easily picture 
 the anxiety of Europeans to discover this monarch, if only 
 on account of his great wealth. The popular legends of 
 Alexander the Great lay at the root of all the amazing 
 statements of the forgery. Up to this stage in the 
 documentary legend of Prester John, we are led to look for 
 him in what is vaguely known as “‘ India’”’. And if the view 
 is correct that the verbal legend originally referred to the King 
 of Ethiopia, we may explain the transference of Prester 
 John’s habitat to Asia first to the fact that Ethiopia was 
 regarded in the Middle Ages as one of the Three Indias, 
 though it was not known exactly where it was ; and secondly 
 to the fact that reports of the conversion of the Turks to 
 Christianity had reached Europe. 
 
 If we imagine that in the twelfth century, if not earlier, 
 travellers’ tales were current in Italy and France regarding 
 a mighty Christian Emperor living somewhere in India, 
 probably ruling over all the Indies when the famous forgery 
 was spread about Europe between 1165 and 1177, numbers 
 of people would be prepared to accept it as genuine, if only 
 because it confirmed these travellers’ tales. The report 
 contained in the Chronicle of Otto von Freisingen and the 
 continuation, may very well have been known only to a few 
 scholars, but it was certainly known to the writer who 
 perpetrated the forgery, which must be regarded as one of 
 
 1 The earliest French versions are addressed direct to Frederick. 
 
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 Maggiore & della Ethiopia 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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PRESTER JOHN 179 
 
 the biggest literary hoaxes ever attempted. On the sole ground 
 that he is said to have translated it from Greek into Latin, 
 the letter has been attributed to Christian, Archbishop of 
 Mainz, who was a partisan of Frederick Barbarossa in his 
 opposition to Pope Alexander III. Seeing that no Greek 
 original has ever been found, the Archbishop must be 
 regarded at least as suspect. But he must have kept his 
 secret very close, and have been overjoyed at the popularity 
 of his invention. Some idea may be formed of the wide 
 currency the letter obtained from the fact that there are more 
 than a hundred manuscripts of the letter preserved in the 
 Libraries of Europe. The British Museum alone possesses 
 ten in the original Latin, one in French and two in English, 
 and there are also a number of versions in German. 
 
 In the meantime Pope Alexander III had learnt from his 
 private doctor Philipus, and from others, that “ Prester 
 John, king of India’”’ was anxious to be instructed in the 
 true Catholic faith; that he wished to have a church in 
 Rome and an altar in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at 
 Jerusalem. The Pope therefore dispatched Philipus to 
 discover this king, bearing a letter, of which various texts— 
 differing very much in length—have been preserved. It is 
 dated 27th September, 1177. This letter does not appear to 
 have been suggested so much by the forged letter, as by the 
 story brought to the knowledge of the Pope by his own 
 doctor Philipus. We know nothing of this doctor beyond 
 what we are told in the Pope’s letter, but it is quite likely 
 that he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and had encountered 
 pilgrims from the actually existing Christian kingdom of 
 Abyssinia, who had charged him to convey the message he 
 brought to the Pope regarding the pious ambitions of their 
 king, and there is every reason to believe that we have 
 here the first documentary allusion to the King of 
 Ethiopia. 
 
 One can imagine the Pope being convinced of the bona fides 
 of the Doctor Philipus, and thereupon sending him on a 
 mission and entrusting him with a letter couched in 
 sympathetic terms. It may be recalled that Alexander III 
 had been engaged in a continual struggle with Frederick 
 Barbarossa from 1159 down to 1177, when the latter, by the 
 Peace of Venice, at last recognized the claims of Alexander III 
 
180 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 to the Papacy.!' Doctor Philipus, we may presume, set out 
 with this letter, and for all we know to the contrary, may have 
 delivered it to the Negus of Abyssinia. But we never hear of 
 the Doctor again, and the first stage in the Prester John 
 inquiry thus ends in 1177. 
 
 It must be remembered that during the period of the 
 Crusades the only known road to Abyssinia was blocked 
 by the Mamluk rulers of Egypt. The Ethiopians themselves 
 were hemmed in all round by the Muslims, and even had 
 they wished, could not have effectively come to the aid of the 
 Crusaders. An instructive example of this state of affairs 
 is to be found in the Arabic History of the Mamluk Sultans 
 by Mufazzal ibn Abu’l-Faza’il ? which tells us that in the year 
 A.H. 677 (A.D. 1273) the Sultan received a letter from the 
 king of Abyssinia, which had been sent under cover of a 
 letter addressed to the king of Yemen, asking the Sultan to 
 order the Patriarch of Alexandria to appoint a Bishop for 
 Kthiopia. From this we may judge how strict was the watch 
 kept on Prester John by the Sultan of Egypt, and 
 consequently how difficult it would be for Europeans to enter 
 Abyssinia. It is indeed remarkable that during the first six 
 Crusades we hear of no definite effort being made to discover 
 the whereabouts of this potential Christian ally. It was not 
 the Crusades, but the invasion of Europe by the Mongols in 
 the middle of the thirteenth century that led to the dispatch 
 of the first mission to find Prester John in Central Asia. 
 In 1241 the Mongols reached Silesia, and it seemed that 
 nothing could stay their relentless onward march, when 
 suddenly the news of the death of the great Khan Ogodai 
 caused them all to return to Tartary. It seems almost 
 incredible that Europe should have been saved from further 
 devastation simply by the circumstance that a new Khan 
 had to be elected. 
 
 The Western nations now set about discovering who these 
 strange nomads really were, where they came from, and how 
 
 1 In Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (under “ Prester 
 John ’’) it is stated, but not upon what authority, that this treaty 
 was signed in July, 1177, and that Alexander III remained in Venice 
 until October, and in the interval received an Embassy from Prester 
 John. 
 
 * Edited and translated by E. Blochet. Patrologia Onenitalis, 
 Tom. XIV. 
 
PRESTER JOHN 181 
 
 to keep them off in future. In 1245 Innocent IV sent a 
 letter to the Khan of the Tartars by the hand of Pian de 
 Carpine, the Dominican. Pian de Carpine set out from Lyons 
 in April, 1245, and took nearly ten months to cross Europe, 
 only leaving Kiev in February of the following year. Twenty 
 days later he encountered the first Mongols, by whom he was. 
 sent on to the Volga where he met Batu, the grandson of 
 Chingiz Khan. Batu, having examined the Pope’s letter 
 which he caused to be translated into Mongolian, decided to 
 send Pian de Carpine on to the Grand Khan. The Dominican 
 reached the Imperial camp, near Karakorum, in July, and 
 there witnessed the enthronement of Kuyuk, who had 
 succeeded Ogodai. Pian de Carpine was well received, and 
 returned safely to Lyons at the end of 1247 bringing the reply 
 of the Grand Khan to Innocent IV. This reply was drawn 
 up in three languages. First a version was written in 
 Mongolian, and this was translated into Latin, and finally, 
 at the last moment a Sarasin version was prepared. The 
 Latin version has long been known in Europe, but the 
 Sarasin version has only quite recently been discovered 
 in the Vatican, and turns out to be written in Persian. This 
 important discovery, made known to us by Monsieur Paul 
 Pelliot,1 has thrown a flood of new light on the history of the 
 missions which passed between the Pope and the Mongols. 
 
 A few years later Saint Louis sent William of Rubruck on a 
 similar mission to that of Pian de Carpine. At this juncture 
 the Christians and the Mongols found themselves opposed 
 to a common enemy, the Mamluks of Egypt. Numerous 
 embassies passed between the Christians and the Mongols, 
 which were all abortive, and intercourse finally came to an 
 end with the formal adoption of Islam by the Mongols of 
 Persia at the beginning of the fourteenth century. 
 
 The story of the European travellers into China in the 
 thirteenth century forms the subject of another chapter in 
 this book, and it is therefore needless here to discuss at any 
 length the adventures of Pian de Carpine, Rubruck, Marco 
 Polo or Oderic de Pordenone. There can be little doubt 
 that these travellers all cherished a hope that they might 
 discover Prester John in Tartary. As Yule says: “ When 
 
 1 Les Mongols et la Papauté in La Revue de l’Orieni Chrétien, 31éme 
 Série, T. iii (xxiii), 1922-3, pp. 3-30. 
 
182 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 the Mongol conquests threw Asia open to the Frank travellers 
 in the middle of the thirteenth century, their minds were 
 full of Prester John; they sought in vain for an adequate 
 representative and they found several. . . and the honour of 
 identification with Prester John, after hovering over one head 
 and another, settled finally upon that of the king of the 
 Keraits.”’ 
 
 No trace has yet been found of the presence of Christians 
 in China prior to the year A.D. 686. What we know of the 
 earliest Nestorian missions is due to the discovery of the 
 famous inscription in Chinese and Syriac which was erected 
 in Si-an-fu in A.D. 781. By the year 1000 there probably 
 did not remain a single Nestorian church in China proper, 
 but long after this date the Nestorians continued to flourish 
 in Central Asia. The two principal tribes who carried on 
 the faith were the Keraits and the Onguts. These Turkish 
 tribes had been converted to Christianity by the influence of 
 Nestorian merchants, and priests were sent to them by the 
 Metropolitan of Merv. The Great Khan Ye-lu-ta-shih who 
 defeated Sanjar in 1141, was not a Kerait Turk but a Kitan, 
 and it was probably the mistaken notion that he was a 
 Christian Kerait that led to the rumour that this conqueror 
 of the Moslem Seljugs was a Nestorian. Pian de Carpine 
 and William Rubruck both hoped that they had found 
 some trace of Prester John, but the only identification which 
 gained any popularity was made by Marco Polo, who thought 
 he had discovered him in the person of a certain Ong Khan or 
 more correctly Wang Khan, a Christian Turk of the Kerait 
 family, who, after a long period of friendly relations with 
 Chingiz Khan, was finally attacked and slain by the Mongol 
 Khan, at the beginning of the fourteenth century. The 
 Christian prince whom Marco Polo himself saw was named 
 George. He imagined this man to be a descendant of Ong 
 Khan, but modern research has proved him to belong not 
 to the Keraits, but to the other tribe of Christian Turks known 
 as the “ Ongut’’. It was in the country of the Onguts that 
 Oderic of Pordenone, writing in 1830, thought that he had 
 discovered the land of Prester John. He was the last 
 traveller to place the priest-king in Central Asia, but Marco 
 Polo’s work had so much influence and was so widely read 
 that the legend of a Central Asian Prester John long 
 
PRESTER JOHN 183 
 
 survived among scholars and educated men in Western 
 Europe. 
 
 Let us now turn to a different line of approach which 
 has hitherto been somewhat neglected, and examine how it 
 came about that among the Portuguese of the fifteenth 
 century it was the Emperor of Ethiopia who was uniformly 
 spoken of as “‘ Prester John’. Our first consideration must 
 be directed rather to some little-known Portuguese historians 
 than to Prester John himself. 
 
 The fate of the works of the great Jesuit missionaries 
 to Abyssinia is as romantic as the adventures of the 
 missionaries themselves ; for although during the sixteenth 
 century half a dozen really fine histories of Ethiopia were 
 written in Portuguese, it was not until the beginning of the 
 present century that the best of them saw the light of print. 
 Though the histories reached Lisbon in safety, they were 
 wholly disregarded, and it was not until the year 1660 that a 
 certain Balsazar Tellez published an epitome of two of them, 
 those of Almeida and Paez.1 Tellez’ work was only an 
 abridgment, but the next step is represented by further 
 abridgment in the shape of Latin, French and English 
 adaptations of the epitome. The only important works 
 of the group that became generally known more or less in 
 their complete form were those of Father Lobo and of Affonso 
 Alvarez. But the works of Father Lobo and Affonso Alvarez 
 are chiefly narratives of travel and adventure and contain 
 very little regarding the history of Ethiopia. Paez, Almeida 
 and others made a profound study of the language and 
 history of Ethiopia, but there seems to have been some 
 rooted objection in Portugal to making known the results of 
 their researches. Thanks to the untiring labours of Father 
 Beccari, and the liberality of the Jesuits in Rome, all these 
 unpublished chronicles have now been carefully printed.? 
 
 It thus came about that the views held by the real 
 historians of Ethiopia regarding the name of Prester John 
 were only known to the world through the abridged accounts 
 given by Tellez and later writers ; and an examination of the 
 
 1 The Historia de Ethiopia a alta, of Tellez, printed in Coimbra in 
 1660, is so rare that only a few copies are known to exist to-day. 
 
 2 P.C. Beccari. Rerum Aethiopicarum scriptores occidentales inediti 
 a saeculo XVI ad saeculum XIX. Roma, 1905, etc. 
 
184 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 original sources reveals a considerable distortion of the facts 
 on the part of the compilers. 
 
 The following considerations may be advanced ; first, that 
 the origin of the name John as applied to a priest-king is to be 
 found in the Amharic language ; secondly, that Marco Polo, 
 as known to the Portuguese, did possibly locate part of 
 Prester John’s kingdom in’ Ethiopia; thirdly, that 
 Abyssinian envoys in the fifteenth century tried to invent an 
 etymology in order to please the Portuguese ; and fourthly, 
 that the Portuguese were never able to reconcile the name 
 with the generally accepted legend, except by supposing 
 Ethiopia to be all that remained of Prester John’s vast 
 empire. 
 
 There have been, as it were, two schools of thought among 
 recent writers, (1) those who hold that Prester John must be 
 sought in Tartary, and (2) those who think he belongs to 
 Africa. Yet a third theory was put forward by the Russian 
 scholar Bruun in 1876, who suggested that Prester John 
 might be found among the kings of Georgia, but this theory, 
 though regarded with some indulgence by Sir H. Yule, is 
 summarily dismissed by Zarncke, who declares that it does 
 not furnish an atom of probability. Apart from the well- 
 known researches of Yule, the principal monographs are 
 those of Gustav Oppert1! and Zarncke.? Quite recently a 
 valuable resumé of the whole question has been published 
 by the Rumanian scholar Constantin Marinescu,® but the 
 real pioneers in the field, like Kircher, Mosheim and d’Avezac 
 are forgotten. 
 
 It must be remembered that from the middle of the 
 fifteenth century the name “ Prester John” invariably 
 means Emperor of Abyssinia, for by that time this title 
 had been universally adopted by the Portuguese, and was 
 used as much as we use the titles Shah, Tsar, Kaiser and 
 Sultan. My own impression is that it was as a general title 
 that it first reached Europe ; that from the outset it referred 
 to the King of Ethiopia, and that the confusion which arose 
 
 1G. Oppert. Der Presbytery Johannes in Sage und Geschichte. 
 Berlin, 1864. 
 
 2 Fr. Zarncke. Der Priester Johannes, in the Abhandlungen der 
 phil.-hist. Classe der K. Séchsischen Gesell. d. Wissenschaften, § VII 
 (1879) § VIII (1883). 
 
 ® Bulletin de Vv Academie Roumaine, vol. x, Bucharest, 1923. 
 
PRESTER JOHN 185 
 
 in the twelfth century was partly due to the wide application 
 of the term “ India ”’, and partly to the inaccessibility of 
 Ethiopia. In order to explain how the name came to be 
 applied to the emperor of Ethiopia, we must go back to the 
 early history of the Abyssinian Church. Christianity is said 
 to have been introduced into Abyssinia about the middle 
 of the fourth century by a certain Frumentius, a commercial 
 traveller, who was eventually appointed first Bishop of Axum 
 by Athanasius, the patriarch of Alexandria. It was this 
 conversion which first brought the Abyssinians out of their 
 own country, notably for the purpose of making the 
 pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; and it was the dependence of the 
 Abyssinian Church on the Patriarch of Alexandria which 
 brought them into further contact with the European 
 merchants in Egypt. After the rise of Islam, when 
 pilgrimages to Jerusalem became a difficult matter, Abyssinia 
 —though spared until the sixteenth century from Muslim 
 invasion—was more or less isolated, but the practice of 
 importing their ‘‘ Abuna”’, or chief prelate from Alexandria 
 continued ; and thus foreigners in Alexandria no doubt often 
 heard of the Christian Emperor in Africa. It is highly 
 probable that it was the Italian merchants and sailors who 
 first brought home stories of the great Christian Emperor 
 who lived in a country beyond Egypt, and whose subjects, as 
 far as they knew, were all priests. The Emperor must 
 therefore also be a priest, and thus one of his titles became 
 ** Presbyter ” or ‘ Prester ”’. 
 
 The earliest conception of the kingdom of Prester John 
 was no doubt a sort of immense Indian Empire corresponding 
 somewhat to the Roman Empire, and there is written 
 evidence to show that when a Prester John was at last 
 thought to have been discovered in Ethiopia, this country 
 was supposed to be the section of India to which his once 
 vast kingdom had been reduced by the conquests of the 
 Tartars. In support of this view we may cite an Italian 
 writer of the fifteenth century and a Portuguese historian 
 of the sixteenth century. A certain Genoese traveller 
 named Antonio Uso di Mare wrote as follows in 1455 :— 
 
 ‘“The Emperor and Christian Patriarch of Nubia and 
 Ethiopia, Prester John, is called Abet Selip, that is ‘ Hundred 
 Men’. This of course is an error, for the title is obviously 
 
186 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 a corruption of Abdus-Salib, or “Servant of the Cross’’, a 
 name given to him by his Muslim enemies. ‘“ These 
 countries are all that is left to Prester John, since the great 
 Khan of Cathay, named Castigan, gave battle to him in 1187 
 in the beautiful plain of Tenduch in Cathay. Crushed by the 
 innumerable multitude of his adversaries, Prester John lost 
 all the territories he possessed in Asia. He only kept the 
 provinces of Ethiopia and Nubia, which abound in gold and 
 suiver:?ia 
 
 The other passage comes from the famous History of King 
 Manoel of Portugal by Damiao Goes, first published in 1567. 
 In chapters 58, 59, and 60 of Book III we read that King 
 John II of Portugal sent Pedro de Covilham and Antonio de 
 Payva on a mission chiefly in order to discover the heretical 
 Christian Emperor “in India” and to convert him to the 
 true religion. Goes goes on to say that “* Covilham did not 
 of course find Prester John in India, as according to Paul the 
 Venetian [i.e. Marco Polo] this monarch had been defeated 
 and killed by the Emperor of China, and there were never any 
 more Prester Johns in that part of the world, although there — 
 were still many Nestorians in the interior of India ’’. 
 
 How ignorant the Portuguese were of the actual extent 
 of Prester John’s realms, even in 1520 when a mission was 
 sent under da Lima, is shown by the instructions issued to the 
 mission to ascertain whether these realms extended as far 
 as the Cape of Good Hope. Another Portuguese writer, 
 Paez,?2 whose account of Abyssinia, though written in the 
 sixteenth century, has only recently been published in the 
 original Portuguese, gives the following information regarding 
 Prester John :— 
 
 ‘** Authors hold many and various opinions concerning 
 the extent and position of the kingdoms and provinces which 
 are comprehended under the name of Ethiopia; but I shall 
 not attempt either to approve or refute their views, for my 
 object here is only to discuss that region which is governed 
 by the Emperor we usually call Prester John. Now although 
 many and serious authors affirm that this Emperor is not 
 Prester John but quite another king, who is contiguous with 
 
 1 See Ch. de la Ronciére, La Découverte de l'Afrique au moyen age 
 (Cairo, 1925), vol. ii, p. 122. 
 2 See Beccari, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 13. 
 
PRESTER JOHN 187 
 
 the Tartars, where there are still Christians, as I was recently 
 assured by a mancebo, natural de Tartaria, who landed in 
 this country : nevertheless in this history I shall call him 
 Prester John, as he is better known in Europe by this name 
 than by any other.” 
 
 The earliest discussion of the name from the point of view 
 of Ethiopia occurs in another work by Damiao Goes which 
 first appeared in Latin in 1540. The explanation given to 
 him by certain Abyssinian envoys may be translated as 
 follows :— 
 
 ‘*Our Emperor is always called Preciosus Ioannes, and 
 not Presbyter Ioannes, as is everywhere mooted. This 
 name (agnomem) is written in our language with the 
 characters "H"4: ‘ON@rA: which is pronounced Ioannes Belul, 
 that is John the Precious or High, and in Chaldee [i.e. Geéz] 
 it is written "H%4: -O%PA that is, Iannes Encoe, which if 
 you translate it also means John the Precious or High. He 
 is called Emperor of Ethiopia and not of Abyssinia as Mathew 
 (the envoy) wrongly stated. For Mathew was an Armenian 
 and could not know our affairs thoroughly, more especially 
 those respecting our religion.” } 
 
 These statements contain a number of errors, as later 
 Portuguese writers discovered for themselves. The Amharic 
 characters as printed in the Paris edition of 1541, have been 
 specially cut out by someone ignorant of the alphabet, 
 but as here printed the letters are what they were originally 
 intended for. It was unfair of the Abyssinians to say that "H1: 
 (more correctly "H™4:) Zan is pronounced Toannes; and the 
 letter "H” Z does not exist in the Chaldee (Geéz) language at 
 all. It is, however, the case that the correct title of their 
 ruler is Emperor of Ethiopia [ya Etiopia Negus]. 
 
 There is a very curious passage in the Ethiopian History 
 of Tellez which deserves quotation as it may possibly be of 
 some importance to the bibliography of Marco Polo. 
 Although this passage has been preserved in the English 
 translation, it has apparently never attracted the attention 
 it deserves. It runs as follows :— 
 
 **Marcus Paulus Venetus, in his Itinerary, very much 
 strengthened the vulgar error, writing that the great King 
 called Prester John used to reside in Archico, which is the 
 
 1 D. Goes, Fides, religio, moresque, Aethiopum sub imperio Pretiosi 
 Joannis (second edition, Paris, 1541), pp. 88, 89. 
 
188 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 first known town belonging to Ethiopia within the Red Sea.”’ 
 Now there is no allusion either to this fact, nor any mention 
 of Archico [Arkiko], in Yule’s exhaustive edition of Marco 
 Polo or in Pauthier’s. It is also remarkable that in Tellez’ 
 rare allusions to Marco Polo his book of travel is always 
 called Itinerario, a title which appears, as far as | am aware, 
 only in the Latin version printed in Amsterdam in 1585. 
 Tellez gives the reference as Chapter 52. 
 
 The fullest discussion of the name Prester John is, however, 
 to be found in the first chapter of Almeida’s ‘‘ History of 
 Abyssinia ’’,! which as it has only recently been published 
 in the original is perhaps worth translating in full :-— 
 
 ‘* This name is so generally used in Portugal and Europe 
 in speaking of the Emperor of the Abyssinians that of 
 necessity some explanation of it must be given by anyone 
 undertaking to write a history of Ethiopia and of this 
 Abyssinian Empire. 
 
 ‘But, as nearly all historians writing on the things of this 
 world dispute this point, investigating and giving different 
 reasons for and versions of this name, I have no intention 
 of delaying in order to repeat that which can easily be found 
 in their works; I will only state that among them Father 
 Nicolao Godinho,? of our society, in Book I, Chapter V of his 
 work on matters relating to Abyssinia, treats this point with 
 the greatest erudition, and establishes in this work with mature 
 judgment and the greatest erudition two assured and well 
 founded facts. First, that the name Prester or Presbyter 
 John was originally given to a Christian Emperor, although 
 a Nestorian, who reigned in the desert of Asia, whose ordinary 
 name was Joanam, taken from Jonas the Prophet (this name 
 has been erroneously changed by Europeans into Jodo). 
 This name was as common among the rulers of that monarchy 
 as was that of ‘“ Pharaoh’’ among the kings of Egypt; the 
 term ‘* Presbyter’’ was taken from the cross which was 
 always carried before him, as among our own people it is 
 carried before Archbishops and Primates ; it is said that when 
 he made war two crosses were carried, one of gold and one of 
 precious stones, testifying to the Christian religion which he 
 professed, and by the richness of the material of which they 
 
 1 See Beccari : op. cit., vol. v, pp. 3-6. 
 3 De Abassinorum Rebus, Lugduni, 1615. 
 
PRESTER JOHN 189 
 
 were made in the same degree as precious stones and gold 
 surpass silver, copper, iron or any other metal, so does the 
 Christian religion surpass all the monarchs of the world in 
 power and nobility. 
 
 ‘“‘The second fact established by Father Nicholao Godinho 
 is that the application of this name of Emperor of Asia to the 
 ruler of Ethiopia arose from the mistake made by Pedro de 
 Covilhaio, who had been sent with another companion (as we 
 shall explain in detail below) by the King Dom Joao IT of 
 enlightened memory to discover India and the Christian 
 Emperor commonly known as Prester John, whose fame at 
 that time was very widespread in Europe. In Cairo, 
 Suakim and Aden, where he landed on returning from India, 
 he heard many things of the Emperor of Abyssinia, amongst 
 others that he was a Christian, master of many large kingdoms, 
 that he was in holy orders, and carried a cross. Being 
 convinced that his search had been successful, and that this 
 was Prester John whom his king had sent him to seek, he 
 wrote to him from Cairo to this effect. The news, welcomed 
 in Portugal, spread throughout Europe, and caused the 
 Emperor of Abyssinia from that day to this to be commonly 
 called by all Prester John; a contributory factor in the 
 extinction of the monarchy of Joanam in Asia was that no 
 Christian Emperor having been heard of there for so many 
 years, the rising fame of the African ruler confirmed the 
 latter in the title of Prester John due to the Asiatic king. 
 
 ‘The truth of the matter has never, up to to-day, been 
 doubted, nor will it be so by anyone in Ethiopia, for either 
 they are ignorant that their Emperor is known by this name, 
 or if we mention it they become alarmed and seek information, 
 but are unable to find anything corresponding to the term or 
 title in their language. Nevertheless there are some in 
 Kurope influenced by Caga Za Ab (whom Domiao de Goez, 
 in the third part of the Chronicle of King Dom Manoel, 
 Chap. 60, calls Zagazabo), an ambassador who, commanded by 
 King David, went there to visit His Excellency Dom Jodo III 
 of Portugal, and also by that of Pedro, likewise an Abyssinian, 
 who accompanied Father Francisco Alvarez of Ethiopia to 
 Portugal, and thence to Italy when he took the letters of the 
 Emperor David to Pope Clement VII, and both one and the 
 other, Caga Za Ab and Pedro, wished to devise versions of this 
 
199 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 name in their language; they did this easily among people 
 unacquainted with it, feigning that they acted by authority, 
 and saying that the name Prester John was derived from 
 Belul and Jan, that this was the same as Precious Gian, 
 and that we ourselves in saying Jodo were merely corrupting 
 the name Jan. All this is fiction without foundation in 
 fact, although someone in Valencia! had an idea that we 
 ought to say Beldigian, and that Belul Jan was not two but 
 one word only. 
 
 ‘* There is no doubt that the Abyssinians call their Emperor 
 Jan, and sometimes Belul as well, but both names are never 
 used together ; 1t would be considered a great solecism and 
 vulgarity among them if anyone said “ Belul Jan ”’ or “‘ Jan 
 Belul’’; after each of these names the word “ ghoj”’ is usually 
 added, it is synonymous with our word “ my” when used 
 to signify affection and tenderness; as an expression of 
 endearment we say to a child, “my dear,” “ my prince,” 
 “my king’’; and this is approximately what the Abyssinians 
 ‘wished to convey when addressing their king. They say 
 ** Janghoj’’, “* Ianghoj”’ or *‘ Belulghoj”’, although this second 
 name is less used among them than the first. The root of the 
 matter is this: Jan, in the ancient Ethiopian language is said 
 to mean elephant, and because this animal is the most 
 powerful and the most alarming of all, his name is given to the 
 king as a title of honour and majesty. Therefore those who 
 appeal at the court of the emperor that he may dismiss them 
 or command the complaints they bring to be heard, cry this 
 name loudly, if they are Amaras, “‘ Janqhoj, Janghoj,” until 
 the Emperor commands a servant to listen to their requests. 
 I said if they are Amaras, because if they are Moors they cry 
 ‘Sidi, Sidi’? and if Portuguese ‘“‘Senhor, Senhor”’ which is 
 the same, if Tigres “‘ Adarie, Adarie’’. Those belonging 
 to other nationalities with other languages make use of the 
 terms peculiar to them. 
 
 ‘“‘The name Belul is less used; it really signifies a jewel or 
 ornament, which on the death of the reigning ruler and 
 election of a new Emperor, was entrusted to an official, 
 whose duty it was to go and communicate the news to the 
 
 1 This refers to Luis de Urreta, who wrote a Historia de la Etiopia, 
 Valencia, 1610, which was very severely criticized by his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
PRESTER JOHN 191 
 
 elected Emperor and place the ornament in his ear, the 
 certain and infallible sign of his election ; hence some called 
 the new Emperor after the name of the ornament 
 ‘* Belulghoj’’, which is equivalent to ““my jewel”? or “my 
 chosen ”’ as it is the sign of his election. 
 
 ‘‘But as I have already stated, the two words Jan and 
 Belul are not in any case used together, neither are as a rule 
 used without the addition of the word “ qhoj”’; it is thus 
 clear that there is no foundation whatever for the statement 
 that the name Prester John is derived from them, especially 
 as there is no doubt that before entering Ethiopia Pedro de 
 Covilhao wrote from Cairo to the King Dom Joao II that he 
 had found Prester John, whom his Majesty had ordered him 
 to seek, he did not invent the name, but applied that mentioned 
 to him by the King, which he first heard in Portugal, to the 
 Kmperor of Ethiopia on finding that he was a Christian, was 
 in Holy Orders and carried a cross, which were more or less 
 the particulars he had heard of Prester John of the Indias, 
 whom he had come to seek. 
 
 ‘“* As we are treating the subject of the name Prester John, 
 which has erroneously been given to the Emperor of the 
 Abyssinians, it is advisable to state briefly that they call the 
 King “‘ Nugue”’ and the Emperor “‘ Neguca Nagasta’’ which 
 is equivalent to “‘ King of Kings”’, the Queen “‘ Neguesta ”’ 
 and the Empress “‘ Negesta neguestat’’, ‘“‘ Queen of Queens’’, 
 
 Another important passage on the same topic occurs in 
 Paez? :— 
 
 ‘“As for the reason why in Europe we usually call the 
 Emperor of Ethiopia Prester John, it may possibly be due 
 to the fact that as the Emperor is usually a diacono, some 
 Greeks call him Presbyter, and then adding to this the title 
 of zan, which, as I have said, is given to the Emperor, they 
 came to say Preste zan, and foreigners, who are often wont 
 to corrupt names, accommodating them to their own language, 
 thus called him Prester loam. This name Zan is of ancient 
 usage in Ethiopia, for, in order to describe some of the 
 offices still held by the descendants of those officials whom 
 Solomon gave to his son Menelik, it is still employed ; for 
 they speak of the officials of zan, as we should say officials 
 of the Emperor. Thus, the master-of-the-horse of the 
 
 a See Beccari< op. cit.,..vyol.il, py 72. 
 
192 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Emperor is called zan beleu, and the chief armourer is called 
 zan aalami.” 
 
 Now none of these statements contains the whole truth, 
 and it is curious that neither the missionaries nor the 
 Abyssinian envoys should have attempted a still more 
 obvious explanation of the origin of the name. Almeida 
 himself tells us that the Abyssinians called their Emperor 
 jan, and that to jan, was added ghoj (anglice hoy), he also 
 knew that zan hoy was the phrase used by the Amharas when 
 addressing their Emperor. He must also have known, 
 though he does not say so, that this vocative was also used 
 when speaking of the Emperor. The Amharic word zan "H'1: 
 is probably derived from the Ethiopian dayyant = a judge, 
 and not from jan an elephant. In Ethiopic the common 
 word for elephant is 7L. I think Almeida must have had 
 in mind the Amharic zahhon. Zan hoy was still in common 
 use down to the death of the late Emperor Menelik. 
 
 Now it may be suggested that this king of Ethiopia was 
 first spoken of by foreigners in Jerusalem and Alexandria 
 as Presbyter, or Preste or Prete, that a need being felt for 
 some fuller title, they inquired his title from the Abyssinians, 
 and learned that they called him Zan hoy. This they added 
 to Preste, and in the process converted it into Giannoi, and 
 finally into Gianni. He is also spoken of as The Prester, and 
 even in Ariosto’s day he was still known as Presto or 
 Pretianni.| Even if this theory be incorrect, it is strange 
 that it did not suggest itself to the Abyssinian envoys or to 
 the Portuguese travellers and historians. 
 
 Not until the Crusades came to an end were missionaries 
 sent to Nubia and Ethiopia, for the Mamluks had blocked 
 the road through Egypt, and when it was at last discovered 
 that the real Prester John was an African king in Ethiopia, 
 neither very powerful nor very rich, but at least a Christian, 
 it took a long time for the legendary stories attaching to 
 this name to die out. In 13816, however, two years before 
 the departure of Oderic of Pordenone on his travels into 
 Asia, eight Dominicans, sent by Pope John XXII, arrived 
 in Abyssinia, and made a number of converts to Catholicism. 
 Abyssinians even entered the Dominican Order, the most 
 
 1 See Orlando Furioso: Canto xxxiii, 106: ‘‘ Gli diciam Presto o 
 Pretianni noi.’ 
 
PRESTER JOHN 193 
 
 notable being the famous Tekla Haymanot. Among the 
 earliest true accounts of Prester John must be reckoned the 
 story told in 1391 to King John I of Aragon by a priest 
 who had spent several years at Prester John’s court.!. In 
 1402 an Ethiopian Embassy under the Florentine Antonio 
 Bartoli arrived in Venice. In 1408 some Ethiopian pilgrims 
 came via Jerusalem to Bologna to visit Padua and Rome, 
 and in 1427 there came to the court of Alphonso V of Aragon 
 two ambassadors from Prester John, one a Christian and the 
 other an “ infidel’’.2 Friar Jordanus (fourteenth century) 
 places Prester John in Africa, while Fra Mauro (middle of 
 the fifteenth century) in his map expressly identifies him 
 with the King of Abyssinia. 
 
 The Portuguese attempts to achieve the circumnavigation 
 of Africa began in 1433, and in 1455 in a letter written in 
 Portugal by the Genoese Uso Di Mare, who was mentioned 
 above, we find the first allusion to the exact whereabouts 
 of Prester John, which he declares to be about 300 leagues 
 from Gambia, six days’ journey from the shore. In 1452 
 we hear of Abyssinian ambassadors at Lisbon ; in 1481 there 
 is another embassy in Rome, and at length in 1487 Covilham 
 is sent by the King of Portugal to look for Prester John. 
 Martin Behaim of Nuremberg in his map of 1492 mentions an 
 Emperor of Abessinie, but he places Prester John in Cathaia, 
 an error that almost certainly arose from his close dependence 
 upon Marco Polo for his geographical information regarding 
 Eastern Asia. 
 
 The traditions regarding the sources of the Nile were 
 already in the fifteenth century associated with the residence 
 of Prester John. It was reported that the Nile came out 
 of a great cavern, at the entrance of which Prester John had 
 constructed two large towers joined by a large chain, so that 
 no one might look into the cavern. There proceeded from 
 within the cavern a very sweet song which made the hearer 
 never wish to go away. If Prester John so desired, he could 
 
 1 He first related his adventures to a certain Comte de Foix. See 
 Antonio Rubiéd y Lluch. Documents per Vhistoria de la cultura catalana 
 mig-eval. Barcelona, 1908. 
 
 * The interview with the King took place at Valencia in the presence 
 of Cardinal de Foix, papal legate, who reported the circumstances to 
 Pope Martin V in the presence of a certain William Fillastre. See 
 Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris, 1842, p. 148. 
 
 O 
 
194 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 make the river flow in another direction, and when travellers 
 at last discovered where Prester John resided, some went 
 so far as to maintain that the Sultan of Cairo paid annual 
 tribute to him so that he might not change the course of the 
 Nile. The Sultan, one writer tells us, allowed no Christian 
 to proceed to India by the Red Sea, nor by the Nile towards 
 Prester John lest these Christians should make a treaty 
 with him by which the Nile should be diverted in its course 
 away from Egypt. Finally, he says, the reason why Prester 
 John does not do so is because of the large number of 
 Christians who inhabit Egypt, who would as a consequence 
 die of hunger. 
 
 Before leaving thesubject of the African Prester John further 
 brief reference must again be made to the first two missions 
 that were sent to that country by the Portuguese, the one in 
 1487 and the other in 1520. Pedro de Covilham after paying 
 two visits to India eventually arrived in Abyssinia in 1490. 
 Though he was never allowed to return to Portugal he sent 
 many reports home to his king and the question of the 
 Ethiopian Prester John was settled once and for all. The 
 second mission, under Dom Rodrigo da Lima, who reached 
 Abyssinia in 1520, was actually in response to a mission sent 
 by the Queen Regent of Ethiopia under a certain Matheus, 
 an Armenian, who was, as we saw above, the complaisant 
 informant of Damido Goes. After a series of misadventures 
 extending over two years, he finally reached Lisbon in 1514, 
 The return mission took this same Matheus with it, but his 
 ill-luck pursued him to the end, and he died a few days after 
 he landed at Massowa. 
 
 One of the results of da Lima’s mission, which spent five 
 years in the suite of Prester John, was the compilation of 
 those works on the History, Manners and Customs of Ethiopia 
 from which we have so freely quoted. By the middle of the 
 sixteenth century such men as Alvarez, Almeida and Paez 
 had written more about Abyssinia and its history than was 
 known of almost any Asiatic country at the period ; but the 
 lack of recognition that their labours received still left 
 Western Europe in ignorance of the facts, and it was not 
 until the visit of the British traveller Bruce in the eighteenth 
 century that the curtain was fully lifted from Prester John’s 
 Kthiopian kingdom. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SEARCH FOR THE SEA ROUTE To INDIA, 
 A.D. 1415-1460. 
 
 By Professor EDGAR PresTAGE, M.A., D.Litt. 
 
 A STUDY of the map of Portugal will suggest some of the 
 
 causes that led her people to become navigators. 
 The country possesses a long seaboard, a splendid natural 
 harbour in Lisbon and a number of others, such as Oporto, 
 Vianna and Setubal, which in the days of small ships proved 
 adequate, while some of them could even shelter crusading 
 fleets. On the north and east lies Spain, divided in the 
 Middle Ages into three kingdoms, the largest of which, 
 Castile, by her superior power prevented the Portuguese 
 from expanding landward and obliged them to look to the 
 ocean as a field of energy and profit. Though the Celts 
 have never been seamen, the Celtic strain in the race provided 
 the imagination necessary for the undertaking of great 
 enterprises, while pluck and perseverance came from other 
 sources, perhaps from the half-tamed Lusitanian stock 
 and the Germanic invaders, for the Phcenician element was 
 too small to have had much influence. 
 
 We know little of the early maritime history of Portugal. 
 Trading relations with the Northern countries and those of 
 the Mediterranean seem to have been active in the first reigns 
 of the Christian rulers of the country and Lisbon and Oporto 
 were important commercial centres, as they could hardly fail 
 to be in view of their geographical position. At the same time 
 a royal navy was gradually developing. In his Chronicle 
 of the first King Afonso Henriques, Duarte Galvam tells 
 us how Dom Fuas Roupinho captured a fleet of Moorish 
 galleys off Cape Espichel, seized others at Ceuta and later 
 on how he fellin with fifty-four Moorish boats in the Straits of 
 Gibraltar and was defeated and killed. Sancho I could send 
 
196 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 forty galleys to join the Crusading armada which took Silves, 
 capital of the Algarve in 1189, while Lisbon arsenal dates from 
 the reign of Sancho II, and in that of Afonso III it built 
 warships for the Crown. King Dinis had the extensive 
 pine forest of Leiria planted, and when the post of admiral, 
 which he had created in 1307, became vacant, he sought a 
 substitute from Genoa, then a leading naval power. His 
 choice fell upon Manoel Pezagno, who in February, 1317 
 became admiral of the Portuguese navy, and undertook that 
 he and his successors would provide twenty Genoese skilled 
 in navigation to command the galleys. Pezagno proved a 
 competent organizer; he built ships, taught the Portuguese 
 the art of warfare at sea, and freed the coast from Moorish 
 pirates. 
 
 In 1326 Afonso IV sent him on a diplomatic mission to our 
 Edward II of England, to negotiate a marriage between his 
 daughter and the future Edward III, and in 1337 he 
 commanded a large fleet which was defeated by the Castilians 
 off Cape St. Vincent. The admiral had brought over to 
 Portugal members of leading Genoese families to serve in the 
 navy, and the first two Portuguese ocean voyages of which we 
 have a record were probably carried out under their auspices. 
 Their destination was the Canaries, which the Genoese 
 Malocello had visited in 1270. The date of the first voyage 
 is uncertain, but as we know that it preceded the wars with 
 Castile and the Moors, it must have been in or before 13386. 
 The second, related by the poet Boccaccio from letters 
 written by Florentine merchants at Seville, took place in 
 1341. The expedition consisted of two vessels furnished 
 by Afonso IV and a smaller ship manned by Portuguese, 
 Italians and Castilians; they left Lisbon on July Ist, and 
 returned in November, bringing with them four natives, 
 skins, dyewood and a stone idol. Various islands were 
 touched at; the first, probably Fuerteventura, estimated 
 to be 150 miles in circumference, they found to be barren 
 and inhabited by naked savages and goats ; the next, perhaps 
 Grand Canary, seemed even larger and was more populous ; 
 the natives lived in houses, possessed palm and fig-trees 
 and cultivated vegetable gardens. Other islands were 
 visited and more were seen; on one they saw a mountain, 
 supposed to be 30,000 feet high. Strange to say, the islanders 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 197 
 
 appeared to have no boats. The delineation of the Fortunate 
 Islands, as the Canaries were then called, on the Laurentian 
 Portolano of 1351 may be due to this last expedition, which 
 was not followed up, because the King of Portugal had 
 other commitments, and perhaps also because in the result 
 it only just paid its expenses. It had, however, apparently 
 been undertaken for the purpose of exploration and not 
 merely as a mercantile venture. 
 
 According to the doctrine received in the Middle Ages, 
 the Popes had power to dispose of newly found lands, and 
 on November 15th, 1344, Don Luis de la Cerda, a great 
 grandson of Afonso X of Castile and Admiral of France, 
 obtained from Clement VI a grant of the Canaries in fief to 
 the Apostolic See under an annual tribute of 400 gold florins. 
 The Pontiff, while reserving the rights of third parties, wrote 
 to various monarchs, asking them to assist the Prince, among 
 them to Afonso IV. In his reply, dated February 12th, 
 1345, the King of Portugal reminded Clement that his subjects 
 had been the first to discover the islands, which were nearer 
 to his realm than to any other and that he had arranged to 
 send a further expedition to conquer them before he was 
 prevented by wars with his neighbours. It seemed, therefore, 
 that he, rather than any other king, ought to be allowed to 
 conclude the business he had began ; nevertheless he would 
 bow to the Pope’s decision, but in view of his own needs the 
 only assistance he could give to his relative Don Luis would 
 be in the form of foodstuffs. Warious attempts to which I 
 shall refer later were made by the Portuguese in the fifteenth 
 century to obtain possession of the Canaries, but the claims 
 of Castile finally prevailed. 
 
 The last years of Afonso IV were disturbed by the revolt 
 of his son and heir Peter, in consequence of the execution 
 by royal order of the latter’s mistress D. Ignez de Castro ; 
 internal questions occupied the attention of Peter during 
 his reign of ten years, while Ferdinand, who succeeded to the 
 throne in 1867, involved himself in three wars with Castile. 
 Though we have no record of ocean voyages during the last 
 half of the fourteenth century, it would be rash to conclude 
 that none took place. If their results proved disappointing 
 the Chroniclers might well omit to register them, but unless 
 the voyages continued, it is difficult to explain the activity 
 
198 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 displayed in that sphere from the second decade of the 
 fifteenth century onwards, and the enthusiasm with which 
 Prince Henry devoted himself to the work of discovery, 
 as soon as he grew up, becomes even more remarkable. 
 Though the naval operations undertaken by Ferdinand were 
 as unsuccessful as the military, he did more by his legislation 
 than any of his predecessors to develop Portuguese sea power. 
 
 Traders of various nations had then establishments in 
 Lisbon, which was a free port, and according to the historian 
 Fernam Lopes, as many as 400 or 500 merchant ships often 
 lay before the city at one time, while 100 or 150 loaded 
 salt and wine at Sacavem and Montijo in the outskirts. As 
 many of these vessels, if not most, belonged to foreigners, the 
 King decreed a series of protective measures to develop the 
 mercantile marine. He encouraged shipbuilding by 
 supplying wood gratis from the royal forests, and allowing 
 other materials to be imported duty free; he reduced the 
 imposts on merchandise carried in the first voyage of a new 
 vessel, he gave owners a partial exemption from military 
 service ; lastly he instituted a register and statistics of shipping 
 and a system of marine insurance on co-operative lines. 
 These measures must have contributed in no small degree to 
 render possible the voyages of exploration in the following 
 century. 
 
 On 6th April, 1885 the Cortes of Coimbra bestowed the 
 crown on John I, who thus became founder of the great 
 dynasty of Aviz. On 9th May, 1386 the treaty of Windsor 
 was signed between Portugal and England, and on 2nd 
 February, 1887, the King married Philippa, daughter of John 
 of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. From this marriage sprang 
 five sons, justly called by Camoées “‘ altos Infantes”’; the 
 third of them, Henry, named by us the Navigator,! half an 
 Englishman by blood and more than half in character, though 
 by physiognomy he strikes us as purely Portuguese,? was 
 born on Ash Wednesday, 4th March, 1394. 
 
 His mother, God-fearing, determined and imbued with a 
 high sense of duty, enforced strict morality on the Court and 
 
 1 Notwithstanding this title bestowed on him in modern times by 
 Englishmen, Henry’s only personal voyages were to Ceuta and Tangier 
 and Alcacer. 
 
 2 See below, p. 200. 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 199 
 
 brought up her sons in accordance with her ideals ; she took 
 care that in addition to bodily training they should receive 
 a clerkly education, with the result that they became men of 
 action and students at the same time, and two of them, like 
 their father, wrote learned books. We do not know when 
 Henry first turned his attention to the sea, but Barros gives 
 us to understand that even before the conquest of Ceuta in 
 1415 he sent out ships to explore down the west coast of 
 Africa, and Faria e Sousa says that the voyages began in 1412 
 and that in this year the Portuguese reached Cape Bojador, 
 the “ bulging”? Cape, 60 leagues beyond Cape Non. The 
 latter historian was only born in 1590 and cannot always be 
 relied upon, but there is reason to think that in the course 
 of the fourteenth century the Portuguese had found Madeira 
 and some of the Azores, as well as the Canaries. According 
 to Diogo Gomes, who belonged to Henry’s household, a 
 certain D. John de Castro was captain of a fleet that the 
 Prince fitted out in 1415, and Zurara! says that from the 
 time Ceuta was taken, the Prince always had ships at sea 
 to guard against Moorish pirates, so that the fear of them 
 kept in security the shores of the Peninsula and the merchants 
 who traded between East and West. 
 
 Gomes adds that in 1416 Henry sent down the coast beyond 
 the Canaries a noble kight Goncalo Velho to find out the 
 reason of the currents there, and that this man afterwards 
 reached a spot called Terra Alta, but the best evidence shows 
 that Cape Bojador was not passed until much later. The 
 Prince’s continuous exploring activities began after the 
 capture of Ceuta at which he won his spurs. In that town, 
 to the knowledge he had already acquired at home and from 
 books about the lands to the South, he added information 
 derived from men who had visited them. Moors told him of 
 the journeys of traders from the Mediterranean coast to 
 Timbuktu and Cantor on the Gambia, and of the regions as 
 far as Guinea. The notices he received from one traveller 
 and another were compared and checked with happy results, 
 for having ascertained the existence of some tall palms 
 near the mouth of the Senegal, he was able to guide the 
 caravels he sent out to find that river many years after. 
 
 1 Chronicle of Guinea, ed. Beazley and Prestage (Hakluyt Society, 
 London, 1896), cap. 5. 
 
200 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 In order the better to supervise the preparation of the 
 expeditions which he resolved to dispatch regularly on a 
 preconceived plan, he retired from Court and fixed his abode 
 in the Algarve, of which he had been appointed Governor, 
 and finally at Sagres near St. Vincent, where he built a small 
 town called Villa do Infante. Its geographical. position 
 and the fact that ships put in to refit, made it an ideal base 
 of operations ; there, immersed in the study of mathematics 
 and cosmography, he passed his years, varied by occasional 
 visits to Court and to other parts of the Kingdom ; there he 
 selected his captains and had his mariners instructed. 
 
 Before we consider the motives that determined his life 
 work and the results he achieved it will be well to have in 
 mind the appearance and character of a man, one of the 
 greatest Portugal has produced, and, as the founder of 
 continuous modern discovery, a world figure. For the first 
 we possess ‘his portrait in one of the triptychs painted by 
 Nuno Goncalves about 1459 for the altar of St. Vincent in 
 Lisbon Cathedral, and now in the Museum of Ancient Art 
 in that city. Though very like the earlier miniature in the 
 Paris copy of the Chronicle of Guinea, the expression of the 
 face is different; the Prince has a softer, even a dreamy 
 look, as of one looking beyond the present ; we see no longer 
 the practical man of business and the stern moralist, but the 
 idealist who carried out the voyages for the spread of 
 knowledge and of the Faith.1 We learn something about his 
 character from his friend Zurara and though the Chronicler 
 wrote as a panegyrist, his substantial truthfulness has 
 never been successfully impugned ; Oliveira Martins, Henry’s 
 hardest critic, fails to convince us that the Prince selfishly 
 sacrificed his brothers in the pursuit of his ends, though 
 as an idealist he seemed at times merciless. This is what 
 Zurara says and Barros confirms: ‘‘The noble Prince was 
 of a good height and broad frame, big and strong of limb, 
 the hair of his head somewhat erect, his colour naturally 
 fair, but by constant toil and exposure it had become dark. 
 His expression at first sight inspired fear in those who did 
 not know him and when wroth, though such times were 
 
 1 See my article in The Burlington Magazine for September, Ig1o, 
 with reproductions of the painting and Dr. José de Figueiredo, O Pintor 
 Nuno Goncalves (Lisbon, 1910), p. 15. 
 
i ei 
 
 
 

 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 201 
 
 rare, his countenance was harsh. He possessed strength of 
 heart and keenness of mind to a very excellent degree, and he 
 was beyond comparison ambitious of achieving great and 
 lofty deeds. Neither lewdness nor avarice ever found a home 
 in his breast, for as to the former he was so restrained that 
 he passed all his life in purest chastity, and as a virgin the 
 earth received him again at his death to herself ...1 His 
 palace was a school of hospitality for the good and high born 
 of the realm and still more for strangers, and the fame of it 
 caused him a great increase of expense, for commonly there 
 were found in his presence men from various nations, so 
 different from our own that it was a marvel to wellnigh 
 all our people; and none of that multitude could go away 
 without some guerdon from the Prince. All his days he 
 spent in the greatest toil, for of a surety among the nations of 
 mankind no man existed who was a sterner master to himself. 
 It would.be hard to tell how many nights he passed in which 
 his eyes knew no sleep ; and his body was so transformed by 
 abstinence that it seemed as if Dom Henry had made its 
 nature to be different from that of others. . . . The Prince 
 was a man of great wisdom and authority, very discreet and 
 of good memory, but in some matters a little tardy, whether 
 it was from the influence of the phlegm in his nature? or 
 from the choice of his will, directed to some certain end not 
 known to men. His bearing was calm and dignified, his 
 speech and address gentle. . . . Never was hatred known in 
 him, nor ill-will towards any man, however great the wrong 
 done him; and so great was his benignity in this respect — 
 that wise-acres reproached him as wanting in distributive 
 justice. And this they said because he left unpunished 
 some of his servants who deserted him at the siege of Tangier 
 . not only becoming reconciled to them, but even granting 
 them honourable advancement over others who had served 
 him well... and this is the only shortcoming of his I 
 have to record. He ever showed great devotion to the public 
 affairs of this Kingdom... and keenly enjoyed the labour 
 of arms, especially against the enemies of the Holy Faith, 
 
 1 This detail is registered by Diogo Gomes, who was with Henry 
 when he died; he says that a hair shirt was found on the Prince’s 
 body. 
 
 2 Doubtless inherited from his English forbears. 
 
202 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 while he desired peace with all Christians; . . . a _ base 
 or unchaste word was never heard to issue from his 
 mouth. ... His heart. never knew what fear was, save 
 the fear of sin.” ! 
 
 Cadamosto, a Venetian and thus a foreigner, is no less eulo- 
 gistic ; he calls Henry the most accomplished Prince of his time, 
 the least of whose virtues would suffice to immortalize another. 
 He ascribes Henry’s steadfastness in pursuing his objects 
 under great difficulties to the confidence his great learning 
 gave him. This was written in Venice after the 
 Prince’s death, and may fairly be considered an impartial 
 testimony. 
 
 According to Zurara, the first object Henry set before 
 himself was the discovery of Guinea, which explains the 
 title bestowed on the Chronicle. Five reasons moved him 
 thereto; he desired (1) to obtain knowledge of the lands 
 beyond Cape Bojador, (2) to establish trading relations with 
 any Christians who might live there, (3) to ascertain the 
 extent of the Muhammadan power in Africa, (4) to find a 
 Christian King who would help him to fight the Infidel, and 
 (5) to spread the Christian Faith. His ends were thus 
 scientific, commercial, political and religious; it is worthy 
 of note that Zurara puts the scientific first. But if the 
 religious comes last, it was not the least to weigh with Henry. 
 In his Chronicle of the capture of Ceuta Zurara says that he 
 learned to hate the Infidel in his mother’s womb, moreover 
 as governor of the Order of Christ he had a positive obligation 
 to combat the foes of the Cross, and the traditions of his 
 family and country impelled him thereto; he proved his 
 crusading zeal at Ceuta and in the attempt on Tangier and 
 he showed solicitude for the conversion of the captives that 
 his men brought home. 
 
 The inception of the expeditions of discovery is described 
 by Duarte Pacheco in Esmeraldo and by Barros in his Asia ; 
 one night the Prince lay sleepless in bed, pondering over 
 his schemes, and at last, as if seized by a sudden fury, he 
 leapt up, called his servants and ordered some ships to be 
 made ready at once for a voyage southwards along the coast 
 of Marocco. All were astonished and attributed this outburst 
 to a divine revelation. Damiio de Goes, a more critical 
 
 1 V. ui supra. 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 203 
 
 historian than Pacheco or Barros,! refers to this story in 
 his Chronicle of Prince John but rejects it ; he explicitly states 
 that Henry had in view the finding of the Indies and sets out 
 the reasons for his belief in its feasibility. The accounts of 
 Herodotus and other ancient writers convinced him that India 
 had been reached by the circumnavigation of-Africa and this 
 certainty (the word Goes uses), together with the information 
 he derived from natives well up in African affairs, led him to 
 order the refinding of the forgotten route. 
 
 At least one expedition had gone out in the Middle Ages to 
 find a sea way to the East, that of the Genoese Doria and 
 Vivaldo in 1291, so that the attempt was no novelty, even 
 apart from the classical voyages known to the Prince. He 
 had certainly studied the works of ancient and medieval 
 geographers cited by Zurara and from them and especially 
 from Marco Polo must have drawn inspiration. The 
 abundance and precision of the data he had collected account 
 for the persistence he showed, and for his refusal to be 
 daunted by failures, heavy expense, and hostile criticism. 
 
 The enterprise may have seemed to him all the more 
 feasible because he could have no accurate idea of the distance, 
 since according to many cartographers Africa was a peninsula 
 about half its actual size, that is to say, the Southern coast 
 of Guinea continued directly to the Indian Ocean. Even 
 in the Laurentian Portolano of 1851, the best medieval map 
 of the dark continent, the latter is shown with a short leg. 
 Henry knew that caravans going across the Sahara had long 
 traded with the Guinea coast, so that if his ships could 
 reach it, they would be well on the way to the East 
 and might hope to find Prester John and secure his 
 assistance. 
 
 In view of a discovery made some years ago, we can no 
 longer consider hyperbolical the passage in Cap. 2 of the 
 Chronicle of Guinea in which Zurara states that inhabitants 
 of the greater and lesser India, that is Indians proper and 
 Abyssinians, visited Portugal and received MHenry’s 
 hospitality, for a document published in part by Senhor 
 
 1 Vignaud says that there are only three first hand authorities as to 
 the intentions and acts of Prince Henry, Zurara, Gomes and Barros ; 
 but he should add Goes, if he includes’ Barros, for they were 
 
 contemporaries. Histoive Critique de la grande enterprise de Christophe 
 Colomb (Paris 1911), vol. i, cap. 4. 
 
204 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 Pedro d’ Azevedo shows that an ambassador of Prester John 
 was in Lisbon in 1452.1 
 
 The presence of this man in Portugal suggests that the 
 Prince had previously opened up relations with Abyssinia 
 and perhaps had sent to fetch him from Italy. If so, this 
 would explain Zurara’s statement that Indians travelled 
 in the Infant’s ships.2. M. de la Ronciére records an embassy 
 from the same country to the Pope and the King of Aragon 
 in 1450.3 
 
 Before describing the maritime expeditions made under 
 Henry’s auspices, it is natural to enquire how far their results 
 may have been anticipated. The undoubted pre-Henrician 
 voyages down the coast of Africa are very few. The 
 Phoenicians sent by Pharaoh Necho may have rounded the 
 Cape of Good Hope, but Hanno probably got no further 
 than Sierra Leone, while the Genoese Malocello only reached 
 the Canaries. Doria and Vivaldo disappeared, so that it is 
 impossible to fix their furthest south, while the voyages 
 of the men of Dieppe in the fourteenth century are certainly 
 not proven, the evidence for them being too late. 
 
 As has been already remarked, Henry’s continued and 
 systematic explorations began only after the capture of 
 Ceuta, at which time he had attained the age of twenty-one. 
 In 1419 Joaio Gongalves Zarco and Tristam Vaz Teixeira, 
 knights of his household, seeing their master’s longing to 
 discover Guinea, offered their services and went as far south 
 as possible, but were driven back by a storm and found the 
 island of Porto Santo. In the following year they returned 
 and in the words of Zurara “ passed over to Madeira’’, 
 which strengthens the view that the islands were already 
 known to the Portuguese as they were to others, for the 
 group appears on fourteenth century maps. The story of the 
 discovery by the Englishman Robert Machin, popularized by 
 D. Francisco Manuel in his Epanaphoras, has no foundation. 
 
 From 1422 at least and probably earlier, the Prince 
 despatched yearly expeditions of one or two ships down the 
 
 1 See his note in the Boletim da Classe de Letras of the Lisbon Academy 
 of Sciences, vol. xiii, p. 525. 
 
 * In the English version of the Chronicle of Guinea, chapter 2, 
 “ passing ’’ is a mis-translation for ‘‘ passages ”’ (vol. i, p. 7, bottom). 
 
 8 Ch. de la Ronciére, La Découverte del’ Afrique au moyen age (Cairo, 
 1925), vol. ii, p. 119. 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 205 
 
 coast, for when Bojador was finally passed, we are told that 
 twelve years had been spent in the attempt. The fact that 
 it ran out far into the ocean, and the shoals and currents 
 that surrounded it, terrified the mariners, who were 
 accustomed to hug the shore and dared not sail far enough 
 from land to get into deep water and avoid them. They 
 were convinced that the ocean beyond the Cape was 
 unnavigable ; moreover they shared the prevalent belief 
 that life could not be sustained in the torrid zone. 
 
 Neither these fears, nor general condemnation of the 
 business as dangerous and unprofitable, moved Henry, 
 and in 1433 he sent out his squire Gil Eannes with orders 
 to double Bojador. This man did no better than the others, 
 but having been despatched again in the following year for 
 the same purpose, he succeeded. Contemporaries regarded 
 the feat as equal to one of the labours of Hercules, and a 
 modern historian has pronounced it greater than that of 
 Bartholomew Dias in passing the Cape of Storms. The 
 glory of Gil Eannes lay not in penetrating some leagues 
 further south, but in overcoming the obstacles which had 
 daunted his predecessors and destroying the conviction that 
 Bojador was the limit of possible navigation. 
 
 The French proverb—“ the first step is the most difficult ”’ 
 —proved true once more, for now one voyage after another 
 resulted in progress. Gil Eannes went out again the year 
 following with Baldaya, Henry’s cupbearer, and sailed 150 
 miles beyond the Cape, now shorn of its terrors, to the Angra 
 dos Ruivos, while in a subsequent voyage the latter reached 
 the Rio do Ouro, 240 miles to the south, and in 1436 he 
 discovered the Porto do Galé, 50 miles further on. 
 
 So far the expeditions had been an exclusive venture of the 
 Prince,! and financed by his own resources and those of the 
 Order of Christ, so that when he was unable to attend to 
 them, they ceased. This respite happened from 1437 to 
 1440, for in those years occurred his disastrous attempt against 
 Tangier, the death of his brother King Edward, and political 
 troubles which kept him fully occupied. 
 
 He was anxious to obtain from the natives information 
 about the lands his caravels had been skirting, and when more 
 
 1 Duarte Pacheco speaks of him as “ the first inventor of this 
 navigation and discovery.’’ Esmeraldo, bk. ili, cap. 5. 
 
206 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 peaceful conditions prevailed at home and the expeditions 
 recommenced in 1441, he ordered his captains to try and take 
 some captives. His wish was gratified by Antam Goncalves 
 who brought back ten Azenegues, among them a chief Adahu, 
 while Nuno Tristam, who had assisted in the capture, went on 
 to Cape Branco. JDesirous of returning to his country, 
 Adahu promised that five or six Moors would be given in 
 exchange for him, and Gongalves, sailing from Lisbon this 
 time and accompanied by one Balthazar, a knight of the 
 household of the Emperor, obtained ten negroes, gold dust and 
 ostrich eggs. In 1448 Nuno Tristam made a further advance 
 to Arguim Bay and took more natives. The Prince welcomed 
 them because he hoped they would serve as guides and 
 interpreters and assist in the propagation of Christianity, 
 but to the people they meant cheap labour and profit, hence 
 slave raids became a feature of succeeding expeditions. 
 Public opinion now turned in Henry’s favour, and private 
 adventurers came forward and undertook voyages on their 
 own account with his consent. The merchants and mariners 
 of Lisbon and Lagos were foremost in this, and the latter 
 formed a company for which Lancarote Pessanha, the 
 receiver of customs, took out a fleet of six caravels and secured 
 235 natives. It is right to say that according to Zurara 
 masters treated the captives like their other servants; the 
 younger were taught trades, freed and married to Portuguese 
 women. Nearly all became Christians and were absorbed 
 into the white population. The Portuguese had no 
 repugnance to black blood, so that slavery with them rarely 
 assumed the harsh aspect it wore when practised by the races 
 of Northern Europe. 
 
 In 1444 Nuno Tristam and others reached the Senegal, 
 in the next year Dinis Dias rounded Cape Verde, and John 
 Fernandes spent seven months among the natives of the 
 Arguim coast and brought back the first reliable account 
 of part of the interior ; in 1446 he made a further advance, 
 and in the opinion of the Visconde de Santarem passed Cape 
 Verga, receiving the reward of 100 doubloons from Henry 
 and the same amount from Peter, then Regent.1 The sandy, 
 sterile, almost uninhabited regions had been left far behind ; 
 the navigators were now coasting a land covered with palm 
 
 1 Chronicle of Guinea, vol. ii, p. 349. 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 207 
 
 trees and verdure and well peopled, whose products rewarded 
 their efforts. But there was a dark side; the raids had 
 aroused the hostility of the natives, and in 1445 and 1446 
 three of the leaders perished at their hands. It is not 
 surprising, for Zurara tells us that by 1448 the Portuguese 
 had carried off 927 captives. In 1445 twenty-five caravels 
 sailed to the West African Coast, including fourteen which 
 left Lagos under Lancarote Pessanha to avenge the death of 
 Gongalo de Sintra the previous year ; and when passing the 
 Magdalen Islands off Cape Verde they saw the arms of the 
 Prince cut on trees, with his device Talant de bien faire. 
 
 By 1446 no less than 51 caravels had left Portugal, 
 penetrating 450 leagues beyond Cape Bojador, and it was 
 found that the coast went south-east with many promontories, 
 and the Prince had it inserted in his charts. Zurara remarks 
 that what had previously been shown on the mappa mundi 
 with respect to this coast had only been depicted at hazard. 
 The result of the expeditions are shown in the map of Andrea 
 Bianco, dated London 1448. In 1447 one of the Prince’s 
 captains opened up relations with the city of Messa in 
 Marocco, and obtained a lion, which he sent to an old servant 
 of his, resident in Galway. The fame of the discoveries had 
 spread over Europe, and men in search of adventure and 
 honour came from various countries to take part in them. 
 Among these was a Danish noble Vallarte, who in 1448 obtained 
 from Henry a caravel to take him to “ Blackland ”’, where he 
 lost his life. This is the last expedition mentioned by Zurara, 
 for though he wrote his Chronicle in 1453, he did not continue 
 the record beyond 1448, because trade and peaceful inter- 
 course with natives had less interest for him than deeds of 
 arms. From that year to 1460 our information is meagre ; 
 almost the only voyages we know of are two of Cadamosto, 
 a Venetian seaman in Henry’s service, already mentioned, 
 who in 1455 and 1457 explored the course of the Gambia 
 and Senegal, and discovered the Cape Verde islands, and 
 two voyages of Diogo Gomes in 1458 and 1460. Sierra Leone 
 had probably not been attained in the Prince’s lifetime.! 
 
 1 The southern limit of the Henrician explorations is an unsolved 
 problem. His biographers have not discussed it adequately, nor have 
 they presented us with a satisfactory map showing the places found with 
 the respective dates. 
 
208 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 For forty years of effort the result may appear small, but 
 the impetus he had given was never lost, and though exploring 
 expeditions became less frequent and regular, the advance 
 that each made was incomparably greater. 
 
 Twenty-two years after his death Diogo Cao, who had been 
 brought up in his household, discovered the Congo, five years 
 later Bartholomew Dias, probably the son of Dinis Dias, 
 one of his captains, reached the southernmost point of the 
 African continent, and in 1498, after a voyage longer than 
 man had hitherto achieved, Vasco da Gama anchored off 
 Calicut, on the Malabar coast of India, thus realizing at 
 length the union of West and East, for which the Prince 
 had striven. 
 
 The coast voyages have been described; it remains to 
 consider those in what Zurara calls the “‘ ocean sea’. Some 
 of the Azores are marked in the Medicean Portolano of 1351, 
 and it is possible that the group was found by Portuguese 
 vessels under Genoese pilots, but we have no record of any 
 visit before Henry sent Gongalo Velho to look for them in 
 1431 or 1432. By 1439 seven were known, and Afonso V 
 gave the Prince leave to colonize them ; the first settlers 
 were Portuguese and Flemings, hence they appear under the 
 name of the ‘‘ Flemish islands ’”’ in some maps. 
 
 It is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to 
 make full, or even very definite, statements about the expedi- 
 tions to the West in Henry’s lifetime. After the discovery 
 of the Azores, it was natural that mariners should seek for 
 other lands in that direction, and in 1452, Diogo de Teive and 
 Pedro Velasco sailed 150 leagues south-west of Fayal in 
 search of Antilia. Legends of lost islands existed, and so 
 fixed was the belief in them that men asked for and obtained 
 grants of what they hoped to find, as witness the con- 
 cession made in 1457 by King Afonso V to his brother 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 Antonio Galvam mentions a voyage of 1447, and an 
 inscription in the 1448 map of Andrea Bianco has convinced 
 some geographers that the north-east corner of Brazil was 
 found about that time, but though this is doubtful, the 
 protest of King John II against the line of demarcation, 
 established by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, and the consent 
 of Spain to its removal westward by the Treaty of 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 209 
 
 Tordesillas in 1494,! so as in fact to include Brazil in the 
 Portuguese sphere, suggest an earlier knowledge of that 
 country. 
 
 In 1500 the pilots of Alvarez Cabral’s expedition recognized 
 the Terra de Santa Cruz (i.e. Northern Brazil) as the same 
 land they had seen marked on an old map belonging to Pero 
 Vaz Bisagudo,? and since only the Portuguese navigated the 
 Western Atlantic, we may conclude that it had been reached 
 many years before that date and previous to the expedition 
 sent by King Manoel I to explore those seas in 1498, which is 
 recorded by Duarte Pacheco. Robert Thorne, writing in 1527, 
 dates the discovery of what we now call Brazil before 1494. 
 That the Western Continent was believed, if not actually 
 known, to exist, is clear from a remarkable assertion of Las 
 Casas; he declares that Columbus on his third voyage 
 planned to sail south from the Cape Verde islands because 
 he wanted to ascertain if the King of Portugal was wrong 
 when he affirmed that there was terra firma in_ that 
 direction. 
 
 It is possible that when Prince Henry found the African 
 route to the East to be longer than he had anticipated, he 
 thought of reaching it by the north-west passage; at any 
 rate, as Dr. Sofus Larsen has recently sought to show, 
 Christian I of Denmark seems to have sent out an expedition 
 of Danes with Portuguese emissaries aboard in 1472-3, which 
 coasted along a continental shore in the region of what we © 
 now know as the St. Lawrence. The suggestion of the expedi- 
 tion is said to have come from Afonso V of Portugal, but 
 as he generally had little interest in the work of discovery, 
 he may have inherited the idea from his uncle, who 
 
 1 The Bull and Treaty are in Alguns Documentos do Archivo nacional 
 acerca das navigacgoes e conquistas portuguesas (Lisbon, 1892), pp. 65 
 and69. Translated in F. C. Davenport, European Treaties bearing on 
 U.S.A. (Washington, 1917), i, 61 sqq. 
 
 2 Alguns Documentos, p. 122. 
 
 8’ Thorne mentions this in connexion with the Tordesillas Agreement 
 of 1494, “‘ When this aforesaid consent of the division of the world was 
 agreed of betweene them (i.e. the Kings of Spain and Portugal) the King 
 of Portugal had already discovered certaine Islands that lie over 
 against Cape Verde, and also certaine part of the maine land of India 
 toward the South, from whence he fette Brasill, and called it the land 
 of Brasil. So that for all that should come in his terme and limites, he 
 took 370 leagues beyond Cape Verde.” MHakluyt’s Voyages (Everyman 
 €dn,), 1, 226. 
 
 E 
 
210 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 certainly maintained relations with his kinsmen, the Danish 
 Kings. 
 
 From what has gone before, it will be seen that our informa- 
 tion about the voyages of the fifteenth century, whether those 
 made under Henry’s auspices, or private ventures, is 
 incomplete, and often confused. In a remarkable study in 
 the review Lusitania for January, 1924, Dr. Jaime 
 Cortesdo, director of the Lisbon National Library, contends 
 that the monopoly aimed at by the Portuguese led them to 
 conceal facts which might provoke international complications 
 or assist their rivals. In 1443, a royal decree provided that 
 no one should sail beyond Cape Bojador without Henry’s 
 leave, and that those who infringed this law should suffer 
 confiscation of their vessels and cargoes, but the Holy See 
 alone could render the monopoly effective against foreigners, 
 and the Prince in his capacity as Crusader and missionary 
 of Christianity and Empire, obtained from successive Popes 
 exclusive rights for Portugal over the lands already dis- 
 covered or to be discovered to the South. Protests came from 
 Castile, whose rulers considered North-West Africa as part of 
 their inheritance by virtue of their descent from the old 
 Gothic sovereigns, and in addition to the Canaries, we find 
 them claiming Guinea after Henry’s seamen had penetrated 
 there. The dispute lasted half a century, and provoked 
 incidents which, had Castile been in a position to undertake 
 it, might have led to war with Portugal. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the Papal grant of 
 the Canaries in 1844 to D. Luis de la Cerda; he seems to 
 have made no attempt to act upon it, but in 1402 and the 
 following years the Normans Jean de Bethencourt and 
 Gadifer de la Salle established Christian colonies in some of 
 the islands, doing homage for them to the King of Castile, 
 who reserved his supreme dominion; thus when Henry 
 initiated voyages down the African coast, he found a foreign 
 power on the flank. It was necessary for the full success 
 of his policy of Portuguese expansion at all costs to obtain 
 possession of the islands, which his Castilian rivals might 
 
 1 Boletim da Classe das Letvas of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, vol. 
 Xv, p. 214. This isa brief summary of Dr. Larsen’s conclusions. His 
 argument is fully set forth in Sofus Larsen, The Discovery of North 
 America twenty years before Columbus (Copenhagen—London, 1925). 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 211 
 
 use asa base from which to push out towards the coveted 
 goal of Guinea. 
 
 In the long and complicated struggle between the two 
 powers that ensued, we have the first of the contests for 
 possessions beyond the sea that have marked the succeeding 
 centuries. Every weapon, naval, military and diplomatic 
 was employed, and the story deserves study in much greater 
 detail than it has yet received. In 1425 the Prince sent an 
 expedition under D. Fernando de Castro to conquer the 
 islands, but the effort failed, and in the following year King 
 John of Castile despatched an embassy led by the Bishop 
 of Burgos to Portugal to make formal assertion of his prior 
 claims to the Archipelago. Henry endeavoured to induce 
 the King to relinquish these, but meeting with a refusal, 
 he determined to secure an overriding grant from the over- 
 lord of the islands, Pope Eugenius IV. In 1485 he succeeded 
 in this, but the day of papal pre-eminence in international 
 affairs was past; the Great Schism with Popes and Anti-Popes 
 bidding against one another for the support of rival powers 
 was hardly healed, and Eugenius IV himself was already in 
 danger of the summons to account for his actions before a 
 Council of the Church that overtook him four years later. 
 King John protested violently against the Pope’s infringement 
 of his rights, and by his orders the Bishop of Burgos raised 
 the question of ownership at the Council of Basel. The 
 Pope hesitated to decide definitely between the two powers, 
 but admonished the King of Portugal to do nothing to the 
 prejudice of the King of Castile. This did not satisfy Henry, 
 and in 1487 he made his attack on Tangier, his object being, 
 as Dr. Corteséo thinks, to anticipate Castile by securing 
 this important base and to assert the rights of Portugal 
 to the conquest of North Africa. Ill-success did not daunt 
 him, it only led him to change his methods, and he made 
 further attempts to obtain the Canaries by negotiation. 
 Though his diplomatic efforts had no result, he obtained 
 in 1446 from his brother, the Regent Peter, a decree that no 
 ships were to go to the islands without his leave, and 
 in 1447 he bestowed the captaincy of the Island of 
 Lanzarote on Antam Goncalves. Not content with thus 
 asserting and exercising rights of ownership, he allowed 
 and probably encouraged attacks in 1450, 1451, and 
 
212 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 1453 on the islands which did not recognize Portuguese 
 authority. 
 
 All this time the Castilians persisted in sending ships to 
 trade down the African coast, and in 1452 some caravels of 
 Seville returning from Guinea were met by Palenco, a 
 celebrated Portuguese sea-rover, who captured one, and 
 imprisoned the crew, while a Genoese merchant found on 
 board had his hands cut off. King John addressed two 
 letters to King Afonso V, dated May 25th, 1452, and April 
 10th, 1454, describing and protesting against these hostile 
 acts and holding Henry responsible for them, and the long 
 dispute was not settled until1480. The Treaty of Alcagovas, 
 signed on March 6th of that year, allotted the Canaries to 
 Castile and North Africa, Guinea and the islands in the ocean 
 to the south to Portugal.1 This secured the monopoly she 
 had worked for, because so long as she held the seas and 
 lands adjacent to the Canaries the possession of the latter 
 by another power was immaterial, nevertheless she would 
 not rely altogether on written agreements, and on April 
 6th, 1480, Afonso V signed a decree ordering that the crews 
 of any foreign vessels found in the Portuguese zone of 
 navigation should be thrown into the sea.2_ Moreover 
 to remove from Castile the temptation to infringe the Treaty, 
 a policy of secrecy was adopted, which included the suppression 
 of information that might serve competitors, and at the 
 same time measures were taken to find out foreign plans 
 and the title deeds relating to the claims of rivals. It 
 was King John II who fully developed the policy of secrecy, 
 but even in Henry’s lifetime Afonso V had a Castilian in 
 his service who acted as “‘ reader of the Chronicles and books 
 of Castile ”’. 
 
 The strange silence preserved by Portuguese Chronicles of 
 the fifteenth century about the discoveries is thus explicable. 
 When Barros came to write of them, he could find no complete 
 copy of Zurara’s Chronicle of Guinea, and he declares that 
 more discoveries were made in the reign of Afonso V than those 
 
 1 As the Treaty says nothing of the East Indies, Vignaud argues 
 that the Portuguese, even as late as this, had no intention of penetrating 
 there. Infact the Treaty only dealt with disputed territories, and there 
 was no reason why it should mention India. 
 
 2 Alguns Documentos, p. 45. 
 

 
 
 

 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 213 
 
 he relates.1. As Dr. Cortesao says, it is not likely that the 
 King would forget to have the voyages after 1448 recorded, 
 when he commissioned Zurara to write the achievements 
 of the Menezes family in Africa. Damiao de Goes states 
 that in his time histories which formerly existed had 
 vanished; he notes that the Chronicle of Afonso V by 
 Ruy de Pina contained only one chapter about the voyages, 
 that of King Duarte by the same author said nothing on 
 the subject, while there was no Chronicle at all covering 
 the latter part of the reign of John I, the beginning of the 
 period of discovery. Goes does not mention the work of 
 Cerveira from which Zurara drew, so that it had evidently 
 disappeared also.2, Pina composed in the sixteenth century 
 the Chronicles of the Kings of the preceding century, using 
 the works of his predecessors, but he omitted to speak of 
 the most important event and chief glory of the age, the 
 voyages and discoveries. Nothing but the official policy 
 of secrecy can account for his silence; as royal Chronicler he 
 must have acted under orders, for otherwise he would not 
 have dared to leave out notable achievements in the recording 
 of which many persons then living had an interest. The 
 disappearance of the earlier and more complete books can 
 only be attributed to the policy of secrecy ; they were almost 
 certainly destroyed. 
 
 Even the Chronicle of Guinea has been tampered with 
 and truncated, as an examination of the two existing MSS. 
 proves, and we have hardly any information about the 
 Atlantic voyages to the West in the last half of the fifteenth 
 century, though we know that some were made. Of this 
 same Chronicle Pina only used enough to form one chapter. 
 Now if, when the discoveries were in their infancy and their 
 great development could not be foreseen, Zurara had been 
 employed to record them, and if Cerveira had related them 
 even more minutely, how came it that they were apparently 
 treated as of less importance when they had transformed 
 the face of the world ? There seems to be but one answer, 
 that suggested by Dr. Cortesio. It is only by chance that 
 we have lately learnt that an ambassador of Prester John 
 
 1 Asia.. Decad.i, bk, ii, cap. 2. 
 
 2 Vignaud is mistaken in saying that Barros saw Cerveira’s book ; 
 what he saw were letters of his written from Benin. Decad i, bk. ii, 
 cap. I. 
 
214 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 visited Lisbon eight years before Henry’s death, and we 
 cannot help wondering what other important finds may be 
 awaiting students among the ancient Portuguese archives 
 in the Torre do Tombo. Again, it was not until the eighteenth 
 century that Caetano de Sousa printed a document by which 
 two years after that embassy, on June 7th, 1454, Afonso V 
 conceded to the Order of Christ the spiritual jurisdiction of 
 Nubia and Ethiopia. 
 
 The policy of secrecy not only led to the suppression of 
 historical works; nautical guides, maps, instructions to 
 navigators and their reports suffered the same fate. 
 
 In the Cortes of 1481 the representatives of the Third 
 Kstate petitioned King John II not to allow foreigners to 
 establish themselves in his dominions, adding that, as regards 
 Florentines and Genoese, they had brought no profit, but 
 on the contrary had found out secrets about Mina,! and the 
 islands. They spoke more truly than they could have known, 
 for it is probable that it was during his residence in Portugal 
 that Columbus obtained the information which enabled him 
 to find his new islands in the West. ' 
 
 Though the traditional view of Henry’s designs and 
 achievements as set out here has been subscribed to by most 
 modern scholars, two, Payne and Vignaud, sought to minimize 
 them. The former considered Henry as mainly an organiser of 
 slave-raids and entirely misunderstood his character ; through 
 ignorance of Portuguese psychology and history he committed 
 himself to baseless statements and indulged in unworthy 
 ironical remarks. His distorted picture? will unfortunately 
 be read by hundreds for one who can find time to go to the 
 sources and learn the true facts. 
 
 Vignaud was better informed, more sober and _ less 
 prejudiced than Payne, and he offered more solid arguments 
 in support of his case ; influenced however by Zurara’s lack 
 of precise statement, he contended that the Prince never 
 aimed at reaching the East Indies, but only endeavoured 
 to open up relations with Prester John. Now though Goes, 
 who has been quoted earlier, wrote nearly a century after 
 Henry’s death, D. Manoel I made an assertion similar to 
 
 1 The fort of Sao Jorge da Mina, the centre of Portuguese power 
 
 and commerce on the Guinea coast, the modern Elmina. 
 4 Cambridge Modern History, vol. i, pp. 10-11. 
 
THE SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 215 
 
 that of the historian in the letters patent whereby the title 
 of Admiral was granted to Vasco da Gama on January 
 10th, 1502; the King there said that his uncle began to 
 discover Guinea with the purpose and will to find India by 
 that coast.t As Dr. Cortesio remarks, the designation of 
 ‘‘ India’? in a grant to the finder of the way thither, made 
 only four years after the great voyage, cannot refer to the 
 realm of Prester John. Besides this, actual contemporary 
 evidence of Henry’s intentions has been preserved. In 
 cap. 16 of the Chronicle of Guinea Zurara reports the Prince 
 as saying that he wished to get knowledge of the Indies as 
 distinct from Abyssinia, and this was as early as 1442. 
 Account must also be taken of the Papal Bulls; in one of 
 January 8th, 1454, Pope Nicholas V bore witness to Henry’s 
 desire to make the ocean navigable as far as the Indians 
 ““who are said to worship the name of Christ ”’ (i.e. the 
 so-called ‘‘ St. Thomas’s Christians ”’ of the Malabar Coast), 
 while Pope Calixtus III in March, 1456, conceded to the Order 
 of Christ spiritual jurisdiction in all the lands to be acquired 
 by the Portuguese explorers beyond Cape Non, throughout 
 all Guinea and beyond that Southern region ‘‘ as far as the 
 Indians’”’. In these “Indians” Vignaud merely saw 
 Abyssinians, but he found himself unable to explain away 
 the reference in cap. 16. In his voyage of 1456 Diogo 
 Gomes had orders to reach India, if possible, and took an 
 interpreter for use if he arrived there. By India Vignaud 
 understood Abyssinia, but he made no reference to Esmeraldo 
 where Duarte Pacheco describes the difference of opinion 
 as to whether the voyages should be made down the coast, 
 or across the ocean as a nearer way, until ‘‘ some land of 
 India was found’. At the time this was written, India 
 certainly meant what it does to us. Moreover, Barros 
 reports that when Bartholomew Dias returned from his 
 discovery of the Cape, King John II named the latter Good 
 Hope ‘‘ for the promise it gave of the finding of India, so 
 desired and for so many years sought after”’. 
 
 If contemporary chronicles are not more outspoken 
 
 1 Alguns Documentos, p. 127. 
 
 2 « He not only desired to have knowledge of that land, but also of 
 the Indies and of the land of Prester John, if he could.”’ 
 
 3 Ibid., bk, iii, cap. 4. 
 
216 TRAVEL IN THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 regarding Henry’s ultimate purpose, the reason lies to a 
 great extent in the fear of arousing the jealousy and opposition 
 of other powers, of Castile and especially of Venice, which 
 controlled the lucrative trade between Europe and Asia. 
 In any case, Zurara could hardly be expected to dilate on a 
 point which had small importance when he wrote, since 
 India was still a far off goal. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abyssinia, see Ethiopia ; histories of, 
 see Almeida, Tellez 
 
 Adam of Bremen, 7, 81, 110, 121 
 
 Adamnan, 60 f. 
 
 Africa, Central, explored, 90, 100; 
 East, ancient knowledge of, 22 ; 
 Cosmas’ knowledge of, 36; West, 
 Castilians on, 211, 212; charts 
 of, 207; Portuguese voyages to, 
 204-8, 210; Ptolemy’s know- 
 ledge of, 22; voyage to, 204 
 
 Africa, Africanus’ description of, 170 ; 
 European travellers to, in Middle 
 Ages, 167, 168; Jews in, 170, 
 171; Malfante’s description of, 
 170; maps of, 203; Moslem 
 toleration of Christianity in, 
 168 ; travellers’ tales of, 166 
 
 Africanus, John Leo, 170 
 
 Agathemerus, Geographical treatise 
 of, 26 
 
 Agricola, conquest of Britain by, 20 
 
 Ailly, Cardinal Pierre d’, cosmogony 
 of, 13-15 ; debt of to Bacon, 18; 
 debt of to Ptolemy, 14, 17; 
 influence of on Columbus, 15, 17 
 
 Albertus Magnus, cosmogony of, 10 
 
 Alcacgovas, Treaty of, 212 
 
 Alexandria, 3, 4, 33, 61, 137 
 
 Almalik, mission station at, 145 
 
 Almeida, history of Abyssinia by, 
 183, 188-92 
 
 al Muqaddasi, journeys of, 96 
 
 Alvarez, 183 
 
 America, discovery of by Vikings, 81 
 
 Antichthones, 7 
 
 Antipodes, discussed by Bede, 6; 
 discussed by Lambert, 8, 9; 
 discussed by Dante, 9; dis- 
 cussed by Albertus Magnus, 11 ; 
 discussed by Roger Bacon, 11, 12 
 
 Antonine itinerary, 27, 28, 52-60, 64 
 
 Arab coins in Sweden, 82 
 
 Arab Empire, culture of, 88, 89; 
 extent of, 88, 89, 113; geo- 
 graphical literature of, 91, 96-8 ; 
 
 population of, 89; postal 
 system of, 91 
 
 Arabian amber, 94; astronomical 
 tables, 11; authors, 13; geo- 
 graphy, 24; merchants, 110, 
 117; pilgrimages, 91; thought, 
 2, 3, 18, 89 
 
 Arabia, 14, 21, 33, 35, 100 
 Arculf, Bishop, 60-66 
 Aristotle, 14, 15, 17 
 
 Atlas of Medieval Geography, 109 
 
 Atias Mountains, 20; caravans 
 from, 168 
 
 Audomarensis, L., Liber Floridus of, 
 
 Autun, Honorius of, 162 
 
 Bacon, Roger, 3, 10-13, 18 
 
 Baghdad, 109, 125, 127, 133, 137 
 
 Baltic, amber route from, 20; 
 German merchants on, 105; 
 Mohammedan trade with, 94 
 
 Banks, see Vivaldi 
 
 Basil, St.,°24—5 
 
 Battatah, Ibn, 90, 99-100, 135 (note), 
 14] 
 
 Beazley, Professor C. R., quoted, 50-3, 
 90,00, 105, 116" 1535. 156 
 
 Beatus, maps, 5 
 
 Beauvais, Vincent of, 160 
 
 Bede, The Venerable, 2, 5-7, 18, 37, 
 69, 72, 165 
 
 Benjamin of Tudela, 105 
 
 Bjorké, 73, 83 
 
 Black Death reaches Europe, 143 
 
 Black Sea, 10, 125, 137 ; Swedes on, 
 82; trade on, 142; trade 
 ruined by Turks, 171 
 
 Blanquerna, 168 
 
 Bojador, Cape of, gone to sail 
 beyond, 210; reached by 
 Portuguese, 199; rounded by 
 
 Portuguese, 205 
 Bokhara, 132, 142 
 Bolgar, 111, 122 
 Boshiislan, 83 
 Brahmins, early age of, 27 
 Brazil, discovery of, 208, 
 Portuguese claims to, 
 Terra da Santa Cruz, 209 
 Breviarius, 50-2 
 
 209; 
 209 ; 
 
 Cabrul, Alvarez, 209 
 
 Canaries, allotted to Castile, 212; 
 Castilian claims to, 210-11; 
 dispute over, 211; granted to 
 Luis de la Cerda, 197 ; Normans 
 in, 210; Portuguese claims to, 
 197; Portuguese voyages to, 
 196 
 
 Carolingian Empire, fall of, 74; 
 overthrows Frisian Empire, 72 
 
 Caspian Sea, shape of, 24; trade on, 
 111, 138; Vikings on, 83 
 
 Castile, 11; claims to Canaries, 
 
218 
 210-12; jealousy of Portugal, 
 216; trade on West African 
 coast, 212 
 
 Cathay, 16, 127, 144; missionaries 
 in, 147; prices in, 145; road to 
 from Tana, 144; routes to, see 
 Trade Routes 
 
 Cerda, Luis de la, 197, 210 
 
 Ceuta, 90, 199, 204 
 
 Ceylon, 26, 34-5, 125 
 
 Church, Nestorian, 89, 127, 130, 138, 
 147, 182; Roman, attitude of 
 towards geography, 24, 26-7; 
 ban on trading with infidels, 
 137; exploring spirit of, 145; 
 rivalry with Greek Church, 105-6 
 
 China, 66, 89, 92, 125; centre. of 
 civilization, 124; Christians in, 
 182; geography of, 21, 35; 
 Ming dynasty, 152 ; missionaries 
 in, 147-9; Tartars in, 126-52, 
 157 ; trade in by Mohammedans, 
 95; trade in, in silks, 143-4; 
 visited by Battitah, 90, 100-3 ; 
 visited by Marignolli, 151; 
 visited by Marco Polo, 134-5; 
 visited by Pordenone, 149 
 
 Circular Route, 109; analysed, 114; 
 attempted by Apostle Andrew, 
 109; / eastern “part of, 110; 
 limitation of area of trade on, 
 116; political adjustments on, 
 112; subsidiary routes of, 112; 
 Cipangu, 16 
 
 Clavijo, 153 
 
 Columbus, Bartholomew, 15 
 
 Columbus, Christopher, 4, 15, 17, 
 154; geographical theories of, 
 15-16, 165; learns Portuguese 
 secrets, (214; medieval in 
 thought, 18; plans in third 
 voyages, 209; preceded by 
 Norsemen, 81; three voyages of, 
 16 
 
 Columbus, Ferdinand, 163 
 
 Conches, William de, 6 
 
 Congo, discovered, 208 
 
 Constantinople, 33, 57, 65, 69, 100, 
 119, 122, 132, 136; route from, to 
 Gothland, 109; trade in, 110, 
 125; trade route from to West 
 Europe, 113; trade with Russia, 
 114-16; Vikings in, 75-6, 82, 
 110 
 
 Cortesio, Dr. Jaime, 210 
 
 Cosmas Indicopleustes, 34, 44, 164 
 
 Cosmogony, Hebrew, 1-2; Bede’s, 
 
 5-6, 11-12; de Conches’, 6; 
 Magnus’, 10-11 ; Bacon's, 
 11-12; Mandeville’s, 12-13; 
 
 D’Ailly’s, 13-15; St. Basil’s, 25 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Covilham, Pedro de, 194 
 Cremona, Bartholomew of, 131 
 Crimea, 100, 142 
 
 Crusades, 2, 99, 180 
 
 search for North-West 
 209; tribute to, 
 
 Danes, 
 Passage by, 
 81 
 
 Daniel, Abbot of Kiev, 104 
 
 Dante, 9 
 
 David, St., Pilgrimage of, 40-3 
 
 Dawn of modern geography; see 
 Beazley 
 
 Delhi, Sultan of, 80 
 
 Denmark ; see Vikings 
 
 Diaz, Bartholemew, 208, 215 
 
 Diaz, Dinis, 206 
 
 Dicuil, 37, 38 
 
 Earth, shape of, according to Beatus 
 map, 5; according to Bede, 
 5-6 ; according to Cosmas, 34; 
 according to Mandeville, 12; 
 accepted as round, 7-9, 12; 
 in fifth century, 25; in Middle 
 Ages, 4; scholastic conceptions 
 of, 12; T.O. shape, 10 
 
 East, Far, described by Ptolemy, 
 21; routes to, 33, 142; severed 
 from Europe, 154; Middle, 
 trade routes to, 23-4, 33 
 
 Eastway, 110 
 
 Egypt, 26, 88, 91, 141, 166 ; route to 
 East, 137; route to Ethiopia, 
 180 ; schemes against, 138, 139, 
 141; trade tolls in, 137 
 
 England, embassy to and from 
 Tartars, 139; Viking settle- 
 ments in, 74, 84 
 
 Eric the Red, 79 
 
 Etheria, Abbess, 31-2, 44 seq., 52 
 
 Ethiopia, 10, 20, 22, 32-4; 
 Christianity in, 185; embassies 
 from to Europe, 193, 204; 
 Emperor of, 183-4, see Prester 
 John; first allusion to king of, 
 179; friars in, 192; histories 
 of, 183, 187, 188, 194; jurisdic- 
 tion over, to Order of Christ, 
 214; name of Prester John in, 
 187 ; one of Three Indies, 178; 
 Prince Henry’s knowledge of, 
 203-4, 215 ; Portuguese missions 
 to, 194; position of during 
 Crusades, 180; trade of, 35 
 
 Europe, Eastern, 105-6 ; ethnological 
 
 settlement of, 105; modern, 
 106 
 
 Exploring expeditions, Italy to 
 Baltic, 20; Mount Atlas, 20; 
 Nile, 20 
 
INDEX 
 
 Finland, 74 
 
 Fountain of Eternal Youth, 164-5 
 
 Freisingen, Otto of, Chronicle of, 174, 
 178 
 
 Friars, Dominican with Marco Polo, 
 133; Dominican in Abyssinia, 
 192-3 ; diplomatic missions of, 
 127-9 ; Franciscan among 
 ‘lartars,. i272. Franciscan im 
 China, 148, 151; Italian in 
 BESte iy, cit india. 140) in 
 Kinsai, 135; John Marignolli, 
 151 ; John of Monte Corvo, 146 ; 
 
 Jordanus, 140-1; in North 
 Africa, 168 ; Odoric of 
 Pordenone, 148-50; Pascal of 
 
 Vittoria, 145; in Persia, 139; 
 Pian de Carpine, 181 ; travelling, 
 145 
 
 Frisian Empire, decline of, 72, 74; 
 extent of, 72-3; references to, 
 72; trading routes of, 73 
 
 Frisian towns, 105; fear of Tartars 
 in, 127 
 
 Fur trade, 94 
 
 Gama, Vasco da, 154, 215 
 
 Gambia, 207 
 
 Ganges, 22 
 
 Genoa, 109, 113, 122, 144, 170 
 
 Genoese, on Black Sea, 142-3, 171; 
 Bank on Malabar Coast, 140; 
 on Caspian Sea, 138; employ 
 Jews, 170; engage in Persian 
 trade, 138; in Portugal, 214; 
 in Sahara, 171; traveller to 
 Abyssinia, 185 
 
 German, merchants, 105; towns, 105 
 
 Geography of d’Ailly, 13-15; Arab, 
 89, 91, 96-8; attitude of Latin 
 Church towards, 24; atlas of 
 medieval, 109; Dawn of 
 modern, see Beazley; East 
 African; 225. of Far East, 21: 
 epitome of treatises on, 300- 
 500 a.p., 37 ; Greek treatises on, 
 
 26 PCT es Row eo Te medieval, 
 28-30; of Ptolemy, 3-14; 
 research in, 89-90; retro- 
 
 gression in, 23 ; slow advance of, 
 121; textbooks in Middle Ages, 
 36-8 ; treatises on altered by 
 Latin Church, 26-7; West 
 African, 22 
 
 Ghazali, 93, 94 
 
 Gille the Russian, 83 
 
 Gobi Desert, 133 
 
 Goes, Damiao de, 186-7, 213-14 
 
 Golubinsky, Professor, 106-7 
 
 Good Hope, Cape of, 215 
 
 Gougaud, Dom., 43 
 
 219 
 
 Greek science, 2, 8; influence of on 
 Arabs, 88-9 
 
 Greenland, 79-80 
 
 Guest houses, 56, 60 
 
 Guinea (Ghana), 169-70, 212; 
 allotted to Portugal, 212; 
 Castilian. “tlaims “to, 4-210: 
 
 chronicle of, 200, 203, 212-13, 
 215; heard of by Prince Henry, 
 199 ; jurisdictionin, 215 ; object 
 of Prince Henry’s voyages, 202 ; 
 regarded as step to India, 215 ; 
 voyages to, 204, 205-8 
 
 Haddeby-Slesvik, 83 
 
 Hardrada, Harold, 7, 75, 81 
 
 Harek of Thjotta, 77-8 
 
 Harold, Fairhair, 72, 78 
 
 Hebrews, 1, 11 
 
 Helleland, 80 
 
 Henry, the Navigator, 163, 173, 198 ; 
 aims of, 202-3; character of, 
 200-2 ; in Ceuta, 199; described 
 by Payne, 214; described by 
 Vignaud, 214-15; early life of, 
 198-200; fame of, 207; fore- 
 runners of, 204 ; naval activities 
 of, 199; plans of for North- 
 West Passage, 209; relations 
 of with Ethiopia, 203-4 ; expedi- 
 tions sent to Guinea by, 204-8 
 
 Hercules, Pillars of, 10, 89 
 
 Herodotus, 24, 40, 203 
 
 Heyd, W., 106-7, 140 
 
 Hippalus, 21 
 
 Hispaniola, 16 
 
 Holy Sepulchre, 46, 48, 58, 61-3, 68, 
 104 
 
 Honorius, 36 
 
 Hospes, see Guest-house 
 
 Humboldt, 13, 18 
 
 Iceland, constitution of, 79; trade 
 of, 84-5; Vikings in, 78-80 
 India, 14, 17, 21, 35, 66, 90, 92, 94, 
 100, 125; centre of Eastern 
 civilization, 124 ; descriptions of, 
 140, 141; inhabitants of in 
 Portugal, 203; jurisdiction in, 
 215; Mandeville’s description 
 of, 161-2, 166; meaning of, 
 34, 178, 215; no mention of in 
 
 Treaty of Alcacovas, 212; 
 reached by Portuguese, 208 ; 
 Red Sea route to, 194; route 
 
 to, 137, 202-3, 209, 215; route 
 thence to China, 141; trade with, 
 124-5, 139-40; three Indies, 
 178 ; visited by Meropius, 32-3 ; 
 wealth of, 176 
 
 India, Lesser, see Ethiopia 
 
220 
 
 Indian Ocean, 21-2 
 
 Indians, Red, 16 
 
 Indies, West, 16 
 
 Treland, 74, 85, 86 
 
 Islam, 89, 90, 
 Muhammadan 
 
 Islands—Antilia, 162; Brasil, 162 ; 
 St. Brandan’s, 162-3; of the 
 Seven Cities, 162-3 
 
 Italian towns, 105, 106 
 
 Itinerary of Antoninus, 52-60, 64; 
 Arculf, 61-6; Bordeaux 
 Pilgrim, 39 ; Etheria, 31-2, 44; 
 Willibald, 66-9. 
 
 Isidore of Seville, 37 
 
 Invention of the Cross, 46 
 
 125 te onsee 
 
 Jerusalem, Church of Holy 
 Sepulchre in, 46, 58, 61-3, 68, 
 104; Conquest of by Saladin, 99; 
 described by Antoninus, 52-5, 
 64 ; described by Arculf, 61-3 ; 
 described in Breviarius, 50-1 ; 
 described by Etheria, 31, 45-6 ; 
 described by St. David, 40, 43 ; 
 described by Theodosius, 48— 
 50; -farer, 76; Mosque of 
 Omar at, 66; Navel of the 
 World, 55, 56, 63; Visited by 
 Philippus, 179 
 
 Jesuits, 183, 188 
 
 Jews, 105-6, 170--1. 
 
 Jordanus, 140-1 
 
 Jubayr, Ibn, 98-9 
 
 Khan, Arghun, of Persia—-Nestorian 
 
 wife of, 138; Latin powers 
 treat with, 138-9 
 Khan, Great, capital of,” 126’: 
 
 court of, 150; embassy from, 
 129, 151; embassies to, 132, 
 151; meets John of Monte 
 Corvino, 150; missions to, 
 128-9, 132-3, 138, 181 ; pleased 
 with choir, 147; question of 
 conversion of, 127, 130, 138; 
 referred to by Columbus, 16 
 
 Khan Kublai, 132-4, 157 
 
 Khan Ogodai, 180 
 
 Khanates, 126, 154 
 
 Kiev, 110-11, 115, 119, 122, 128 
 
 Kinsai, 134-5 
 
 Kaut,-71, 76+7 
 
 Labrador, 80 
 
 Lambertus Audomarensis, 8, 9 
 Lapland, 74 
 
 Leif the Lucky, 80 
 
 Liber Floridus, 8; Glossarum, 37 
 Libya, 166 
 
 Lima, Dom Rodrigo de, 194 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lira, Nicholas of, 17 
 
 Lobo, Father, 183 
 Longjumeau, Andrew of, 129 
 London, 72 
 
 Louis, St., 128-9 
 
 Lully, Raymond, 168-9 
 
 Macrolinus, 5 
 
 Malabar, 100-1, 140-1 
 
 Malaya, 21, 92 
 
 Malfante, F., 171-3 
 
 Mandeville’s Travels, 12, 159; 
 author of, 160; description of 
 Terrestrial Paradise, 164-5; 
 extracts from, 12, 161-2, 167 
 
 Maps, Africa, 203; Atlas of 
 Medieval geography, 109; 
 D’Ailly, 14; Carignano’s, of 
 
 Sahara, 169; Circular route, 
 109 seg. ; Development of, 12 ; 
 Jewish, of Africa, 170; 
 Lambert’s, 8, 9; Laurentian 
 Portolano, 197, 203 ; Medicean 
 Portolano, 208 ; Mercator’s, 4; 
 of Mythical Islands, 162; 
 Peutinger Table, 24, 28; 
 Ptolemy’s, 3; sent to Emperor 
 Julian, 29; showing Prester 
 John’s kingdom, 193 ; 
 Ortelius’, 4 ;° States and travels 
 of the Norsemen, 109; T.O., 
 10; Turin, 7 ; of West Africa, 207 
 
 Marcellinus, Amm., 28 
 
 Marcianus, 24-5. 
 
 Marinus of Tyre, 24, 36 
 
 Marignolli, John of, 151 
 
 Markland, 80 
 
 Marquardt, 105 
 
 Mauretania, 166-7 
 
 Mecca, 91, 98—100 
 
 Mediterranean, 10, 80, 113, 125; 
 adjective first used, 26; Arab 
 influence on, 88, 113; circular 
 route on, 109 
 
 Mercator, Gerhard, 4 
 
 Merchants, among Tartars, 131-2 ; 
 Egyptian, 172; Genoese, 143, 
 170-3; German, 105; hand- 
 book of, 143-6; in East 
 Africa, 22; in India, 139-40 ; 
 in Timur’s Empire, 153; 
 Italian, 125, 132, 138, 143-4; 
 Jewish in Africa, 170-1; 
 lexicon of, 146 ; Muhammadan, 
 90, 92-4 
 
 Mesopotamia, 45, 88, 92 
 
 Middle Ages, articles of trade in, 94 ; 
 commerce of, 136; confused 
 character of, 107 ; cosmogony 
 of, 4-19; divisions of, 1-3; 
 geographical text-books of, 
 
INDEX 
 
 36-8 ; meaning of, 20; 
 Muhammadans in, 90; most 
 pPopmar/sbook? of, 12:* St. 
 
 Isidore in, 37 ; sea captains of, 
 96; universal principles of, 
 106; writers of, 44 
 
 Missions in Abyssinia, 183, 194; 
 am China,..147) 151::,in india, 
 140; in Kiev, 111; in Persia, 
 139; Jesuit, 183; Portuguese, 
 194; stations, 145 
 
 Missions, Diplomatic, 105 
 
 Missionary journeys, 32-3, 
 147 
 
 Mongols, see Tartars 
 
 Monte Corvino, John of, 146-8,150-1 
 
 Moors, 169-70 
 
 Morocco, 88, 92, 94, 168 
 
 Morris, William, 71, 77 
 
 Muhammadans, Brotherhood of, 
 89, 90; conquests of, 66; 
 by Tartars, 127; conversion 
 of Tartars by, 152; culture of, 
 106; Merchants of, 90, 92-4 ; 
 in Sicily, 99; pilgrimages of, 
 91, 98; toleration by, 168 
 
 Mugqaddasi, al, 96-7 
 
 130, 
 
 Negroes, 172 
 
 Nestor, chronicle of, 106—7 
 
 Nestorian Christians, 89, 127, 130, 
 138, 147, 182 
 
 Newfoundland, 80 
 
 Niger, 100, 170; 
 Nile, 172 
 
 Nile, confused with Niger, 172; 
 exploration of, 20; sources of, 
 36, 193; trade on, 36, 169 
 
 Norway, see Vikings 
 
 Novgorod, 109, 111-12, 114, 118, 
 122 
 
 confused with 
 
 Ohthere, 74, 119-20 
 Oat... 77 
 
 Olaf Tryggvason, 76 
 Ormuz, port for India, 137 
 Orosius, 26, 37 
 
 Ortelius, A., 4 
 
 Oualata, 169 
 d’Outremuse, J., 160 
 
 Paez, 183, 191-2 
 
 Paulinus, 8, 20 
 
 Papacy, 106 
 
 Paris, Matthew, 127, 155 
 Pegolotti, handbook of, 143-6 
 Peking, Archbishop of, 146, 152; 
 
 closed to Europeans, 153; 
 described, 149-50 ; Great 
 Khan’s palace in, 134; silk 
 
 trade of, 143 
 
 221 
 Peutinger Table, 27-8 
 Pesagno, Manoel, 196 
 Persia? (21,1925) 100; e125 5"a 32: 
 
 antechamber to East, 137, 139 ; 
 becomes Muhammadan, 139; 
 Khan of, 138; missions in, 
 139';, Roman route’ to, .23 ; 
 route through, to India closed, 
 152)" Tartans sin 29 e157 
 trade through, to India, 138 ; 
 trade route, 137; trade, 138 
 
 Persian Gulf, 24, 34, 125, 133 
 
 Philippus, Dr., 179 
 
 Pirenne, Professor, 113 
 
 Pian de Carpine (Carpin), 128; 
 Ambassador from Pope _ to 
 Great Khan, 181; in Mande- 
 ville’s Tales, 160 
 
 Pilgrimages, Antoninus’, 27-8, 52- 
 60; Arculf’s, 60-6; Bishop 
 Willibald’s, 66-9; Bordeaux 
 Pilgrim’s, 39; Daniel’s, 104; 
 St. David’s, 40-3; Etheria’s, 
 31-2, 44-8, 52; Ethiopian, 
 193; Muhammadan, 91, 98; 
 motives of, 43-4; Russian, 
 104; checked by Islam, 66 
 
 Pisa, 125 
 
 Pliny, 20, 36, 44; 
 14, 17, 160 
 
 Polar discoveries, 81 
 
 Polo, Maffeo, 32 ; route of, to China, 
 
 views cited, 
 
 132; return of, 136; second 
 journey of, 133 
 
 Polo; \Marco;\-16,.. 2l). 87,133; 
 employed by Kublai Khan, 
 133-4; reports by, 136-8; 
 return of, 136; travels of, 
 134, 135. 
 
 Polo, Niccolo, 132-3, 136 
 
 Pope, authority of, over new lands, 
 197; embassy to and from 
 Kublai Khan, 130; embassy 
 toy Great Khan, 14],0 151% 
 embassy to Prester John, 179 ; 
 failure to settle Canaries 
 dispute, 211-12; grant of 
 Canaries, 197, 210; grants of 
 exclusive rights to Portuguese, 
 210; line of demarcation by, 
 208 
 
 Pordenone, Oderic of, 137, 141, 148, 
 182, 192; quoted in Mande- 
 ville, 160; route of, to China, 
 148 
 
 Portugal, 16, 88, 170 
 
 Portuguese, attack by, on Tangier, 
 211s circeumnavigation of 
 Africa, 193; claims to Brazil, 
 208, 209; claims to Canaries, 
 197, 210*12; concealment of 
 
222 
 
 discoveries, 210, 212-14; 
 development of sea power, 198 ; 
 early maritime history, 195-6 ; 
 expedition to North-West 
 Passage, 209; obtain North 
 Africa and Guinea, 212; ocean 
 exploration, 4; relations with 
 Abyssinia, 193-4; slavery, 
 206-7; views on Prester John, 
 185-7 ; voyages to Canaries, 
 196; voyages on West Africa 
 coast, 199, 204-8; voyages 
 of Atlantic discovery, 208 
 
 Poseidonios, 25 
 
 Powell, Professor F. York, 71 
 
 Prester John, associated with Nile 
 sources, 193; called Emperor 
 of Ethiopia, 183 ; embassies to, 
 193; European conception of, 
 185-6; Forged letter of, 
 174-8; Freisingen Chronicle 
 mentions, 174, 178 ; legends of, 
 
 127, 2 148.5% letter: ito,.; from 
 Alexander III, 179; Mission 
 to find, 180, 194; Marco 
 
 Polo’s version of, 182; origin 
 of name of,” 187 —92 ; 
 Pordenone’s version of, 182; 
 Portuguese missions to, 186; 
 sought by Prince Henry, 203, 
 214; sought for in Central 
 Africa, 182; theories on, 184-5; 
 true accounts of, 193 
 Ptolemy, on Africa, East, 21; West, 
 22; on Caspian Sea, 24; 
 on Far East, 21; knowledge 
 forgotten, 36, 38; quoted by 
 D’Ailly, 14, 17; quoted by 
 Marcianus, 25; on South of 
 Tripoli, 22; translated into 
 Arabic, 89; works, 3-4, 14, 17 
 
 Quilon, 140-1 
 
 Rabban Bar Sauma, 138-9 
 
 Red Sea, 35, 166; Muhammadan 
 trade on, 95; route to India, 
 194 
 
 River routes, 113 
 
 Ronciere, C. de la, 168, 171 
 
 Rubruck, William of, 129, 181 
 
 Russia, conquered by Tartars, 126; 
 Swedes in, 75, 82; Vikings in, 
 75, 81 
 
 Russian Church, 106; Chronicle, 
 109 ; empire, 75; pilgrimages, 
 104-5; plains, routes across, 
 109-10 ; Prince, description of, 
 111,115; trade, 111, 113, 142; 
 trade with Constantinople, 
 114-116 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sahara, 100, 168; description of, 
 by Lully, 169; lands beyond, 
 170; map of, 169; trade with 
 Guinea, 203; travel in, 171, 
 206, 207 
 
 Saladin, 99 
 
 Samarcand, bishop of, 177; coins 
 of, in Scandinavia, 83; golden 
 journey to, 142 
 
 Santarem, Visconde de, 6 
 
 Scandinavia, see Viking 
 
 Schiltberger, Reisebuch of, 153 
 
 Seneca, 14, 17 
 
 Senegal, 170, 199 
 
 Serquis, 130 
 
 Seven Cities, Isle of, 163 
 
 Ships, 77-8 
 
 Shipbuilding, Frisian, 72 ; 
 141; Viking, 72, 76-8 
 
 Sicily, 99 
 
 Sidonius, C. S. Appolinaris, 29 
 
 Sierra Leone, 207 
 
 Junks, 
 
 Sigilmessa, caravans from, 168; 
 Genoese merchants in, 170; 
 merchandise of, 169 
 
 Silvius, Aeneas, 15 
 
 Skiringssalr, 83 
 
 Slave-trade, Kaffa, 142; Portu- 
 
 guese, 206-7; Viking, 84, 110 
 
 Slavs, 27 Rh 
 
 Solinus, 4, 26, 44, 160 
 
 Spain, 14-17, 23, 66, 92, 94, 109, 
 153; see Castile 
 
 Spruner and Menke, 109 
 
 St. Brandan, Isle of, 162 
 
 Sudan, 90, 92; caravans from 
 Morocco to, 168 
 
 Sumatra, 12 
 
 Swedes, in Constantinople, 82; in 
 Russia. 75, (820. 11020120 
 journeys of, 81-2; trade of, 
 81-3, 112; see Vikings 
 
 Syria, 92, 100 
 
 Tabriz (Tauris), 137-8 
 
 Tangier, 90, 100 
 
 Tartars, centre of government of, 
 126; civilization of, 156-7; 
 conquest of China, 126; con- 
 quests of China, effects of, 
 145; conquests of China, 
 extent of, 126; conquests of 
 Russia, 126-7; embassies to, 
 128-32, 181; fall of, in China, 
 152; fall of, in Persia, 152; 
 historicalimportance of, 154-7 ; 
 influence of, on Caliphate, 
 127 ; influence of, on Western 
 trade, 136-7, 142, 180; 
 Khanates of, 126; as Moslems, 
 152; suggested Christianity 
 
INDEX | 
 
 of, 127, 129, 136; toleration 
 by, 127; Western ideas of 
 conquest of, 127 
 
 Tashkurgan, 125 
 
 Tauris, see Tabriz 
 
 Teliez, 183, 187-8 
 
 Terra da Santa Cruz, 209 
 
 Terrestrial Paradise, 8, 163-6 
 
 Theodosius, 47-50, 57 
 
 Thorne, Robert, 209 
 
 Thule, 6, 15 
 
 Timur, 153 
 
 Tiphilis (Tiflis), 33-4 
 
 Topography of Holy Land, 47 
 
 Tordesillas, treaty of, 209 
 
 Trade, African, 171-3, 176; Arab, 
 on Volga, 111; articles of, 94, 
 108, 135, 142; blocked by 
 Turks, 125; in Crimea, 142; 
 on Eastway, 110; with Far 
 East, 124; identified with 
 booty and tribute, 112, 117- 
 120; Jewish, 170; Muham- 
 madan, 92, 94; opened by 
 Tartars, 125-6, 136; Red Sea, 
 
 95; at Termini of Circular 
 Route, 125; in Viking Age, 
 83, 84; (see separate towns 
 
 and countries) 
 Trade agreements, 120-1 
 Trade centres, 120-1 
 Trade routes, 
 Scandinavia — Russia, 
 caravan, 142, 153, 
 circular, 109-112; Chinese, 
 133, 136-7, 141, 142, 145; 
 Far East, 33, 113, 120-1, 125, 
 153, 154; Middle East, 23-4 ; 
 Eastern seaway, 112; Frisian, 
 73, 87; goods brought by, 
 110-16; legends of, 121; of 
 Northmen, 109; Roman, 108 ; 
 safety of, 145; silk, 132, 143; 
 value of, see Pirenne; Volga, 
 111 
 Travellers Tales, 39, 159; African, 
 166; of Islands in Western 
 Ocean, 162-3, 208; in 
 Mandeville’s Travels, 160-1 ; 
 Muhammadan, 102 ; of 
 Terrestrial Paradise, 163; of 
 Prester John, 174, 178 
 
 Byzantine— 
 OO 
 168 ; 
 
 Travels, Frankish, 182; Mande- 
 ville’s, 12, 159-65, 167; of 
 al-Muqaddasi, 96-7; under 
 
 Timur, 153 
 Tribes, Jewish, 11 
 Tribute, 117-20 
 
 Tristam, Nuno, 206 
 Tudela, 165 
 
 Turin Map, 7 
 
 Turkistan, 92 
 
 Turks, 34, 125, 171, 182 
 
 ‘Umar, 93 
 Upsala, 83 
 Ural Mountains, 74 
 
 Varangian guard, 75; trade, 109, 
 118, 120; see Vikings 
 
 Venice, 75, 109, 113, 122, 125, 132, 
 134, 136, 142, 144, 170, 193, 216 
 
 Verde, Cape, 22 ; Islands, 207, 209 ; 
 rounded by Diaz, 206 
 
 Vigfusson, 71 
 
 Vignaud, Henri, 214, 215 
 
 Vikings, Adam of Bremen’s 
 description of, 7; in Con- 
 stantinople, 75, 110; coinage 
 
 of, 84; culture of, 85; early 
 travels of, 2; evolution of, 
 into traders, 117; in Green- 
 land, 80; in Iceland, 78, 79 ; 
 misconception of age of, 70; 
 popularizing of literature, 70, 
 71; raids of, 71, 74; in Sicily, 
 99; trade of, 83, 84, 114; 
 trade centres of, 83; trade 
 routes of, 109; in Vinland, 80, 
 81; zenith of, 106 
 
 Vinland, Vikings in, 80-1 
 
 Visby, 83 
 
 Viadimir, 106-7 
 
 Volga, 100, 113, 116, 128-9, 131-2 
 
 Vivaldi, Bank in Gujerat, 140; 
 Bank in Malabar, 140 
 
 Western Continent, 80-1, 209 
 
 Western Ocean, 162-4; Portuguese 
 voyages in, 208 
 
 White Sea, 74, 81 
 
 Willibald, Bishop, 66-9 
 
 Wulfstan, 74 
 
 Yarkand, River, 125 
 Yaqit, 98 
 Yule, Sir H., 182, 184, 188 
 
 Zaiton, Bishop of, 151; church in, 
 
 Lae. 3513). described > Agr 
 Genoese in, 152; Great port 
 of, 135; Junks from, 141; 
 Marco Polo leaves, 136; trade 
 of, 135 
 
 Zurara, 212-14, 216 ; cf. Chronicle 
 of Guinea 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Stebhen Austin & Sons, Ltd., Hertford. 
 
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