in the thirteenth century, another of the mediæval Church authorities, Cæsar of Heisterbach, declared, "As the heart in the midst of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our inhabited earth"; "so it was that Christ was crucified at the center of the earth." Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty and wedded it to immortal verse.
Ezekiel's statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early map-makers. The map of the world at Hereford Cathedral, the maps of Andrea Bianco, Marino Sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed this view in men's minds, and doubtless helped during many generations to discourage any scientific statements tending to unbalance this geographical center supposed to be revealed in Scripture.[1]
Nor did mediæval thinkers rest with this conception. In accordance with the dominant view that physical truth must be sought by theological reasoning, the idea was evolved that not only the site of the cross on Calvary marked the geographical center of the world, but that on this very spot had stood the tree which bore the forbidden fruit in Eden. Thus was geography made to reconcile all parts of the great theologic plan. This doctrine was hailed with joy by multitudes; and we find in the works of mediæval pilgrims to Palestine, again and again, evi-
- ↑ For the beliefs of various nations of antiquity that the earth's center was in their most sacred place, see citations from Maspero, Charton, Sayce, and others in Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, chap. iv. As to the Greeks, we have typical statements in the Eumenides of Æschylus, where the stone on the altar at Delphi is repeatedly called "the earth's navel"—which is precisely the expression used regarding Jerusalem in the Septuagint translation of Ezekiel (see note below). The proof texts on which the mediæval geographers mainly relied as to the form of the earth were Ezekiel, v, 5, and xxxviii, 12. The progress of geographical knowledge evidently caused them to be softened down somewhat in our King James's version; but the first of them reads, in the Vulgate, "Ista est Hierusalem, in medio gentium posui eam et in circuitu ejus terræ", and the second reads, in the Vulgate, "in medio terræ," and in the Septuagint, ἐπὶ τὸν ὸμφαλὸν τῆς γῆς. That the literal center of the earth was understood, see proof in St. Jerome, Commentar. in Ezekiel, lib. ii; and for general proof, see Leopardi, Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi, pp. 207, 208. For Rabanus Maurus, see his De Universo, lib. xii, cap. 4, in Migne, tome cxi, p. 339. For Hugh of St. Victor, see his De Situ Terrarum, cap. ii. For Dante's belief, see Inferno, canto xxxiv, 112-115:
"E se' or sotto l'emisperio giunto,
Ch' è opposito a quel che la gran secca
Coverchia, e sotto il cui colmo consunto
Fu l'uom che nacque e visse senza pecca."For orthodox geography in the middle ages, see Wright's Essays on Archaeology, vol. ii, chapter on the map of the world in Hereford Cathedral; also the rude maps in Cardinal'd'Ailly's Ymago Mundi; also copy of maps of Marino Sanuto and others in Peschel, Erdkunde, p. 210; also Miinster, Fac Simile dell' Atlante de Andrea Bianco, Venezia, 1869. And for discussions of the whole subject, see Santarem, vol. ii, p. 295, vol. iii, pp. 71, 183, 184, and elsewhere. For a brief summary with citations, see Eicken, Geschichte, etc., pp. 622, 623.
