172 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



for centuries had been the focus of their aspirations, their 

 anxieties, and their most earnest hopes and devoted exertions. 



Scripture seemed to sanction this feehng. We find the 

 following passages quoted for the purpose: "This is Jerusa- 

 lem; I have set it in the midst of the nations round about her" 

 (Ezek. v., 5). The 12th verse of the 74th Psalm in the 

 Vulgate runs thus: '' Opcratus est salutem in medio terra"; 

 and again, in the 12th verse of the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, the 

 Vulgate has "umbilicus terrae" for the Hebrew word "tabicr" 

 — the midst of the land. 



A fourteenth-century writer describes Jerusalem as " ■pjinc- 

 tus circumfer entice," and exaggerates the historical claims to 

 centrality by representing Judea as having been the seat of 

 each branch of the human race, and the favoured scene of 

 God's manifestation in the works of creation and redemption 

 in the past, and of final judgment in the future. Mediaeval 

 cartographers gave effect to these views by placing Jerusalem 

 as nearly as possible in the centre of the map, and this re- 

 mained the custom till the middle of the fifteenth century. 

 Assuming that Jerusalem occupied the central portion of the 

 habitable world, and taking into consideration its position on 

 the verge of Asia and in the line of the Mediterranean, it 

 follows that Asia held one-half of the world, and Europe 

 and Africa, being divided by the Mediterranean, must almost 

 equally divide the remaining half ; and accordingly, in the 

 Alexandrian romance popular in Europe in about the thir- 

 teenth century, we find — 



At Asyghe al so muchul is 

 So Europe and Affryh I wis.* 



Also in the Cursor Mundi — 



For Asie is withouten hope 



As myche as Aufrik and Europe. t 



The world was thus divided symmetrically into three parts, 

 and is so represented in many of the small maps in the illumi- 

 nated manuscripts of the period. The preponderating size of 

 Asia was attributed to its being the inheritance of Shem, the 

 first-born. :|: Although many geographers wished to consider 

 Europe and Africa as one, thus making two halves only, the 

 above-mentioned writer brings Scripture to bear on the point, 

 and settles it in favour of the three divisions, on the ground 

 that Ham and Japhet had their separate domains. 



The habitable world was limited within a circle drawn 

 from Jerusalem as a centre, and with a radius equalling the 

 distance thence to the Strait of Gibraltar. Here was— 



* Lines 65 and 56, Weber's Metrical Romances, vol. i. 

 t Cursor Mundi, 1. 2097, MS. R., 3, 8, Trin. Coll., Camb, 

 \ (lervaise of Tilbury, Ot. Imp., ii., 2. 



