2 8o GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. 



who went to or returned from Palestine halted for a day at this abbey, 

 where they were received with the greatest hospitality, and told the story of 

 their travels and adventures (Figs. 200 and 201) to their learned hosts. It 

 was here that Constantino the African, one of the lights of the school of 

 Salerno, retired, after having, when he left the schools of Alexandria and 

 Bagdad, travelled through Egypt and Asia for twenty-nine years. His 

 wonderful lore earned him the reputation of a sorcerer, but the Due de 

 Pouille, Robert Guiscard, whose secretary he was, protected him, and he was 

 able to continue undisturbed his medical and geographical works in a retreat 

 where his curious descriptions of the countries beyond the sea lighted up the 

 hours of repose and recreation which the monks of St. Benedict were allowed 

 to snatch from their labours and prayers. 



The University of Paris was not yet founded, but the ecclesiastical 

 schools already flourished in the capital as well as in all the important 

 cities which had their bishop. The teaching of geography was limited 

 at that time to a few rudiments, all more or less erroneous, and it was in 

 the Latin classic poets, such as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, that students got 

 some idea of the facts relating to descriptive geography. Nothing can prove 

 more clearly the ignorance which then prevailed as to the shape of the globe 

 than the rough designs which are to be met with in a few manuscripts of the 

 eleventh century, the authors of which could never have seen Ptolemy's 

 Geography. The geographical descriptions which occur in some of the 

 poetry of the time were much nearer the truth, for the poets of the eleventh 

 and twelfth centuries, such as Ausonius and Venantius Fortunatus, wrote 

 of countries and places which they had seen. It was in this way that 

 Marbodius, Bishop of Rennes, who died in 1123, sketched in his didactic 

 poetry the geography of Brittany, giving it a picturesque character quite 

 in harmony with nature. 



There were, however, some few men of genius to whom the general study 

 of science had, even at that period, opened the arcana of astronomical and 

 philosophical geography. Such was the master of Roger Bacon, that man of 

 learning whose real name is not written in the works of his illustrious pupil, 

 and who appears to have been one Mehairicourt, a native of Picardy. Roger 

 Bacon always speaks of him as Master Peter. Philosopher, mathematician, 

 and geographer, he had travelled in Europe and Asia before coming to Paris, 

 where he taught Roger Bacon, about 1230, that which no other teacher had 



