THE RECTANGULAR EARTH.
Sketched in the Bollettino della Società geografica italiana (Roma, 1882), p. 540, from the original in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence. The representation of this sketch of the earth by Cosmas Indicopleustes more commonly met with is from the engraving in the edition of Cosmas in Montfaucon’s Collectio nova patrum, Paris, 1706. The article by Marinelli which contains the sketch given here has also appeared separately in a German translation (Die Erdkunde bei den Kirchenvätern, Leipzig, 1884). The continental land beyond the ocean should be noticed.
As to the distribution of land and water, the oceanic theory of Crates, as expounded by Macrobius, prevailed in the west, although the existence of antipodes fell a victim to the union, in the ecclesiastic mind, of the heathen theory of an impassable torrid zone with the Christian teaching of the descent of all men from Adam.[321] The discoveries made by the ancients in the ocean, of the Canaries and other islands known to them, were speedily forgotten, while their geographic myths were superseded by a ranker growth. The Saturnian continent, Meropis, Atlantis, the Fortunate Isles, the Hesperides, were relegated to the dusty realm of classical learning; but the Atlantic was not barren of their like. Mediæval maps swarmed with fabulous islands, and wild stories of adventurous voyages divided the attention with tales of love and war. Antillia was the largest, and perhaps the most famous, of these islands; it was situated in longitude 330° east, and near the latitude of Lisbon, so that Toscanelli regarded it as much facilitating the plan of Columbus. Well known, too, was Braçir, or Brazil, having its proper position west and north of Ireland, but often met with elsewhere; both this island and Antillia afterward gave names to portions of the new continent.[322]
Antillia, otherwise called the Island of Seven Cities, was discovered and settled by an archbishop and six bishops of Spain, who fled into the ocean after the victory of the Moors, in 714, over Roderick; it is even reported to have been rediscovered in 1447.[323] Mayda, Danmar, Man Satanaxio, Isla Verde, and others of these islands, of which but little is known beside the names, appear for the first time upon the maps of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but their origin is quite unknown. It might be thought that they were derived from confused traditions of their classical predecessors, with which they have been identified, but modern folk-lore has shown that such fancies spring up spontaneously in every community. To dream of a distant spot where joy is untroubled and rest unbroken by grief or toil is a natural and inalienable bent of the human mind. Those happy islands which abound in the romances of the heathen Celts, Mag Mell, Field of Delight, Flath Inis, Isle of the Heroes, the Avallon of the Arthur cycle, were but a more exuberant forth-putting of the same soil that produced the Elysian Fields of Homer or the terrestrial paradise of the Hebrews. The later growth is not born of the seed of the earlier, though somewhat affected by alien grafts, as in the case of the famous island of St. Brandan, where there is a curious commingling of Celtic, Greek, and Christian traditions. It is dangerous, indeed, to speak of earlier or later in reference to such myths; one group was written before the others, but it is quite possible that the earthly paradise of the Celt is as old as those of the Mediterranean peoples. The idea of a phantom or vanishing island, too, is very old,—as old, doubtless, as the fact of fog-banks and mirage,—and it is well exemplified in those mysterious visions which enticed the sailors of Bristol to many a fruitless quest before the discovery of America, and for centuries tantalized the inhabitants of the Canaries with hope of discovery. The Atlantic islands were not all isles of the blessed; there were many Isles of Demons, such as Ramusio places north of Newfoundland, a name of evil report which afterward attached itself with more reason to Sable Island and even to the Bermudas:
“Kept, as suppos’d by Hel’s infernal dogs;
Our fleet found there most honest courteous hogs.”[324]
Not until the revival of classical learning did the continental system of Ptolemy reach the west; the way, however, had been prepared for it. The measurement of a degree, executed under the Calif Mamun, seemed to the Europeans to confirm the smallest estimate of the size of the earth, which Ptolemy also had adopted,[325] while the travels of Marco Polo, revealing the great island of Japan, exaggerated the popular idea of the extent of the known world, until the 225° of Marinus seemed more probable than the 180° of Ptolemy. If, however, time brought this shrinkage in the breadth of the Atlantic, the temptation to navigators was opposed by the belief in the dangers of the ocean, which shared the persistent life of the dogma of the impassable torrid zone, and was strongly reinforced by Arab lore. Their geographers never tire of dilating on the calms and storms, mudbanks and fogs, and unknown dangers of the “Sea of Darkness.” Nevertheless, as the turmoil of mediæval life made gentler spirits sigh for peace in distant homes, while the wild energy of others found the very dangers of the sea delightful, there was opened a double source of adventures, both real and imaginary. Those pillars cut with inscriptions forbidding further advance westward, which we owe to Moorish fancy, confounding Hercules and Atlas and Alexander, were transformed into a knightly hero pointing oceanwards, or became guide-posts to the earthly paradise.
If there be a legendary flavor in the flight of the seven bishops, we must set down the wanderings of the Magrurin[326] among the African islands, the futile but bold attempts of the Visconti to circumnavigate Africa, as real, though without the least footing in a list of claimants for the discovery of America. The voyages of St. Brandan and St. Malo, again, are distinctly fabulous, and but other forms of the ancient myth of the soul-voyages; and the same may be said of the strange tale of Maelduin.[327] But what of those other Irish voyages to Irland-it-mikla and Huitramannaland, of the voyage of Madoc, of the explorations of the Zeni? While these tales merit close investigation, it is certain that whatever liftings of the veil there may have been—that there were any is extremely doubtful—were unheralded at the time and soon forgotten.[328]
It was reserved for the demands of commerce to reveal the secrets of the west. But when the veil was finally removed it was easy for men to see that it had never been quite opaque. The learned turned naturally to their new-found classics, and were not slow to find the passages which seemed prophetic of America. Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Aristotle, and Theopompus, were soon pressed into the service, and the story of Atlantis obtained at once a new importance. I have tried to show in this chapter that these patrons of a revived learning put upon these statements an interpretation which they will not bear.
The summing up of the whole matter cannot be better given than in the words applied by a careful Grecian historian to another question in ancient geography: “In some future time perhaps our pains may lead us to a knowledge of those countries. But all that has hitherto been written or reported of them must be considered as mere fable and invention, and not the fruit of any real search, or genuine information.”[329]