COMPASS-CHARTS 



obtained an improved form of the compass from Italy, and with 

 it the Italian word. 



COMPASS-CHARTS 



We do not know how early the magnetic needle's property 

 of pointing to the north became known in Europe and was used 

 for finding the way at sea. The first mention of it is found at 

 the close of the twelfth century in the works of the Englishman 

 Alexander Neckam, professor in Paris about ii 80-1190, and 

 of the troubadour Guyot de Provins from Languedoc. The 

 latter, in a satirical poem of about 1190, wishes the Pope would 

 imitate the immutable trustworthiness of the polar star by 

 showing the steadiness of the heavenly guide; for sailors come 

 and go by this star, which they are always able to find, even in 

 fog and darkness, by a needle rubbed with the ugly brown 

 lodestone; stuck in a straw and laid upon water, the needle 

 points unfailingly to the north star. As late as in 1258 Dante's 

 teacher, Brunetto Latini, saw as a curiosity in the possession 

 of Roger Bacon, at Oxford, a large and ugly lodestone, which 

 was able to confer on an iron needle the mysterious power of 

 pointing to the star; but he thinks that it cannot be of any 

 use, for shipmasters would not steer by it, nor would sailors 

 venture to sea with an instrument which was so like an inven- 

 tion of the devil. As always when the progress of humanity is 

 at stake, orthodoxy and religious prejudice raises its head. 

 It is certain that the use of the compass-needle must have 

 been known in the Mediterranean at the beginning of the 

 thirteenth century, and probably even in the twelfth. It has 

 been alleged that the compass was known long before that 

 time, even in the eleventh and tenth centuries; but no proof 

 of this has been found, and it does not appear very probable.^ 

 How early the compass, or lodestone, was known in the North 



1 Cf. K. Kretschmer, 1909, pp. 67 f.; Beazley, iii. 1906, p. 511. It has been 

 asserted that the compass was discovered at Amalfi. This is not very probable, 

 but it seems that an important improvement of the compass may have been 

 made there about the year 1300. 



