CHAPTER VII
NICHOLAS OF LYNN. ZENO. MEDIEVAL NAUTICAL INSTRUMENTS
There was dwelling in Oxford, when Chaucer was young, a scholar known as courteous Nicholas. He lodged with an old carpenter who had married a very young wife. He had a room to himself, and was devoted to the study of astrology and mathematics. On shelves at his bed head he had several books, including the Almagest of Ptolemy, as well as an astrolabe, and angrim stones used in numeration.
The poet Chaucer and the scholar Nicholas had tastes in common. Both loved music and both studied what was then known of the sphere and the means of fixing positions. Chaucer wrote a treatise on the astrolabe addressed to his little son Lowys in 1391 and called it “brede and milke for children.” In this treatise Chaucer mentions Nicholas with great respect. We shall not be far wrong either in assuming Nicholas the scholar to have been a friend of Chaucer, or in identifying him with the Carmelite monk Nicholas of Lynn, who would take his place as England’s first Arctic explorer if his work had not been lost—a loss which is almost a national calamity.
In 1360 Nicholas of Lynn undertook an expedition to Norway and the isles beyond towards the pole, beginning from 54° N. and fixing the latitudes with an astrolabe. Hakluyt quotes Gerard Mercator as writing that an English monk and mathematician of Oxford had been in Norway and the islands in the north, describing all those places and determining their latitudes by an astrolabe. He is said to have written a work on his expedition entitled Inventio Fortunata, which is lost; and another work is attributed to him, De Mundi Revolutione. Dr Dee wrote that Nicholas made five voyages into the northern parts, and left an account of his discoveries.
Dr Nansen is the first writer I know who treats Nicholas of Lynn seriously. He shows that the work of Nicholas was known to Las Casas, who had read it, and also to Martin Behaim, who on his globe places isles all round the pole which are not shown on any older map and, Nansen thinks, are evidently taken from Nicholas of Lynn. The maps of Claudius Clavus, one of them quite recently brought to light, and other medieval maps, also probably derived their information from our forgotten Nicholas. One would give a good deal to know which were the northern islands that he visited. Evidently his work had an influence on the productions of the cartographers through the next century.
The Zeni map.
We owe much to the cartographers, and it is deeply interesting to watch their gradual acquisition of fresh knowledge, and their treatment of uncertain and disputed points. But there have been cartographers of a different kind who have invented and knowingly led students and navigators astray. If such men gain a hearing, the injury they do may endure for a century or more. Such a man was Niccolo Zeno.
This Niccolo Zeno, of a noble Venetian family, published what professed to be an account of the voyage of two of his ancestors in the far north in the service of a northern chief named Zichmni. Niccolo himself lived in the 16th century (1515–1565) and the voyages of his ancestors were supposed to have been made in the 14th century. The narrative was accompanied by an extraordinary map covered with names. It showed Greenland brought round to join Norway, Iceland, a large island called Friesland between Iceland and Greenland, lands to the west near America called Estotiland and Drogeo, and another large island in the Atlantic called Icaria. Niccolo Zeno was accepted as an authority by Mercator in his map of the world (1569) and by Ortelius (1570) and the narrative found a place in Ramusio (1574). Meanwhile the false information continued to mislead travellers and navigators. On the first English globe by Molyneux in 1572 Zeno’s Friesland and Drogeo are shown. As late as 1631 Luke Fox has “Frisland” on his polar card. The false information held its ground for a hundred years.
Among modern writers there were differences of opinion. In 1784, J. Reinhold Foster fully accepted all Zeno’s story as true, and identified Zichmni with Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. Maltebrun accepted the story, and Humboldt was inclined to accept it. Lelewel accepted it. Mr Major gave whole-hearted credence to Zeno’s statements, and wrote a standard work on the subject (1873). Desimoni (1878) claimed that Major had settled the question.