NA TURE 



73 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1902. 



MEDI.EVAL GEOGRAPHY. 



The Dawn of Modern Geography. Part ii. A History 

 of Exploration and Geographical Science from the 

 close of the Ninth to the Middle of the Thirteenth 

 Century (c. ad. 900-1260). Pp. xix + 651. By C. 

 Raymond Beazley, M.A , F.R.G.S. (London : John 

 Murray, 1901.) Price i8j. 



IN the present volume of Mr. Beazley's work on the 

 beginnings of modern geography, the author takes 

 us from the time of the irruption of the Northmen into 

 the Middle Sea to the days of the first western travellers 

 in the Far East, the precursors of the Polos. He traces 

 the gradual and painful regaining by the semi-barbarians 

 of the early Middle Age of the earth-knowledge which 

 their civilised forefathers had possessed, but which had 

 been lost during the Dark Ages, until all that had once 

 been known was known again and renascent Europe 

 stood on the brink of discoveries of which Phoenicians, 

 Greeks and Romans had hardly dreamed ; with Marco 

 Polo, Prince Henry the Navigator and Columbus, the 

 third part of Mr. Beazley's work will deal. 



The central fact of this period, as Mr. Beazley makes 

 quite clear to his readers, is the Crusades. That the 

 attack of Western Europe on the East was inspired by 

 the spirit of the Northmen there can be little doubt. The 

 urging of the Church would have fallen upon deaf ears 

 had there not been abroad in the world a spirit of adven- 

 ture and aggression, a will to dare and to do, which the 

 older world had not known. This was not the spirit of 

 Roman conquest, for it was ignorant, and had no definite 

 consciousness of a mission to absorb and to reorganise ; its 

 desire was to do battle with the unknown, to court danger 

 and to win renown in mortal combat with the devils and 

 sorcerers of the East, the Paynim followers of Mahound, 

 who was to all intents and purposes identified with the 

 Arch-Fiend himself. If Medueval Europe did not get this 

 spirit of attack from the Romans, still less did she get it 

 from their barbarian conquerors. The Ostrogoth and 

 the Vandal, having overthrown the Empire, were suffo- 

 cated and buried in its ruins. The Dark Age followed. 

 Western Europe lay stupid, immobile, almost without an 

 idea. Suddenly the inspiration came like a keen wind 

 from the North ; the Scandinavian descended in his multi- 

 tudinous keels upon all the coasts of Europe ; he con- 

 quered half England and a good part of France, he 

 beleaguered Paris four times in forty years, he swept 

 with the wind in his sails through the Straits and into 

 the Middle Sea, he waged war in Sicily, and finally 

 established himself in Miklagarth (" the great city," Con- 

 stantinople) itself as the chosen Vaering or protector of the 

 Byzantine Emperor. Here he held out a hand to his 

 brethren who had imposed their rule upon the Slavs of 

 Russia, and so the Roman world was girt about and shot 

 through and through with the spirit of the Vikings. And 

 by this time Roman Europe had itself influenced the 

 Northman ; it had Christianised him. He became as 

 fierce a Christian as he had been a heathen. He gave to 

 Christian Europe the spark of virility, the desire to dare 

 and to do the uttermost for its faith, which it had lacked ; 

 NO. 1/26, VOL. 67] 



it was now ready for the colossal adventures of the 

 Crusades. 



Mr. Beazley does not lay so much stress upon the 

 Scandinavian origin of the Crusading spirit as we have 

 done ; with what he says, however, on p. 137, as to the 

 general results of the Crusades we are in entire agree- 

 ment. As he remarks, 



" the land-travels of men who started from the Latin 

 Kingdoms of the East" undoubtedly " led to a decisive 

 and abiding extension of knowledge and civilisation. . . . 

 European life was not impoverished, but enriched by the 

 religious wars ; and the only doubt must be whether it 

 was necessary through such tribulation to enter into 

 the brighter age of the great discoveries." 



On pp. 407, 408, Mr. Beazley proceeds to exhibit one 

 of the most striking results of the Crusades, and that 

 one which marks a third epoch in the progress of 

 geographical knowledge — the rise to power of the mari- 

 time republics of the Mediterranean. They supplied the 

 necessary transport to the Crusaders, and so 



" by serving the cause of Christendom they served their 

 own ; they multiplied, many times over, their carrying 

 trade ; they largely increased their export and import 

 commerce ; above all, they acquired a privileged, a more 

 than half political, position on the coasts of the Levant. 

 As time went on, and they became more indispensable to 

 the Crusading princes, they were able to dictate their 

 terms more freely, until the main burden of the Holy 

 War rested upon them as the chief holders of power." 



Thus were laid the foundations of the power of Venice 

 and Genoa in the Nearer East, which for many 

 centuries warded off from Western Europe the danger 

 of Mohammedan conquest ; Venice remained to the last 

 a Crusading State, even down to the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century, when her successful defence of Corfu 

 under Schulemburg marked the final failure of the return- 

 attack of the Crescent upon the Cross. From that siege 

 dates the political decadence of Islam, and with it the 

 political mission of the Venetian Republic also came to 

 an end ; there was no further need for her existence. 



Even before the period of the Crusades, the Holy City 

 had been the magnet which attracted hundreds of pil- 

 grims from the West, despite the dangers of the way and 

 the tyranny of the Saracen ; the scanty accounts of their 

 travels which have come down to us are of the greatest 

 possible value as showing how knowledge of the Eastern 

 Lands was gradually and painfully regained for the West ; 

 the epoch of the Crusades itself is naturally rich in such 

 accounts of pilgrim-journeys. The impulse to far- 

 journeying which was given by the Crusades naturally 

 gained largely in strength in the post-Crusading period \ 

 emissaries of the republics and kingdoms of the West 

 penetrated far into the East, and the Holy See itself did 

 not hesitate to dispatch its representatives to the court 

 of the Grand Cham of Tartary. These last missions 

 were, however, hardly of the same character as those of 

 Przhevalski or Sven Hedin ; they were dictated by no 

 desire of discovery or longing for more knowledge — for 

 this we have to wait until the time of Prince Henry the 

 Navigator — their aim and object was simply and solely to 

 urge the Mongols, who were now shaking the Muham- 

 medan power in the East to its foundations, to do the 

 work which Christendom had been unable to do, and to 

 destroy the common enemy of Christian and Heathen 



