258 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION OP 



improvement in its construction. That the compass was 

 used in European seas much earlier than the beginning of 

 the fourteenth century is proved by a nautical treatise of 

 Raymond Lully of Majorca, the highly ingenious and 

 eccentric man whose doctrines inspired Giordano Bruno with 

 enthusiasm when a boy, ( 40 ) and who was at once a philo- 

 sophical systematiser, a practical chemist, a Christian teacher, 

 and a person skilled in navigation. He says in his book 

 entitled "Penix de las maravillas del orbe," writ ten in 1286, 

 that mariners made use in his time of " measuring instru- 

 ments, of sea charts, and of magnetic needles/' ( 401 ) The 

 early voyages of the Catalans to the north coast of Scotland 

 and to the west coast of tropical Africa, (Don Jayme Ferrer, 

 in the month of August 1346, reached the mouth of the 

 Rio de Ouro), and the discovery of the Azores (the Bracix 

 Islands of Picigano's map of the world in 1367) by the 

 Normans, remind us that the open western ocean was navi- 

 gated long before Columbus. That navigation of the high 

 seas which, under the Roman empire, had been ventured 

 upon in the Indian Ocean between Ocelis and the coast of 

 Malabar in reliance upon the regularity of the periodical 

 direction of the winds, ( 402 ) was here performed under the 

 guidance of the magnetic needle. 



The application of astronomy to navigation was prepared 

 by the influence which, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth 

 century, was exerted, in Italy by Andalone del Nero and 

 John Bianchini who corrected the Alphonsiiie astronomical 

 tables, and in Germany by Nicolaus of Cusa, ( 403 ) Georg von 

 Peuerbach, and Regiomontanus. Astrolabes capable of being 

 used at sea for the determination of time, and of geographical 

 latitudes by meridian altitudes, underwent gradual improve- 



