My next chapter, titled "The Trefoil of the World", elaborates on the conventional geographical construct of the three continents forming the habitable world. This image, linked to the scholastic ideas of ancient Greeks and to the Christian philosophy, had further developments throughout the Middle Ages, culminating in detailed "world maps".
Image: Noah’s sons observing their estates from Jean Mansel's illustration to "La Fleur des Histoires" https://www.pinterest.com/dekockmarijke/noah/?lp=true
"Mappamundi, that is
to say, image of the world and of the regions which are on the earth and of the
various kinds of peoples which inhabit it."-The Catalan Atlas (2)
The
cosmographers who contemplated the mysteries of the Earth would employ two
distinct approaches. On the one hand, they mulled over dry land as an orphan island,
whose patchy outlines almost merged with the turbulent waves of the boundless
Ocean. On the other hand, they zoomed in
on the trefoil of continents divorced from each other by overwhelming water
bodies.
These
conventional diagrams, dubbed
T-O maps [Latin: orbis terrarium or “the circle of lands”], reflected the basic
medieval outlook on the inhabited world. The phrase borrowed from Isaiah applies
to the Lord King sitting “enthroned above the circle of the earth”. (3)
T-O
graphs, featuring the “T” inscribed within the “O”, displayed the circle of lands
girdled by a narrow ocean belt. The Mediterranean Sea served the upright pole of
the capital “T”, while the Don River in Russia and the Nile shared the
crossbar. The former “Roman Lake” separated Europe from Africa. The Don cut the
former away from Asia, while the Nile disconnected it from the Dark Continent.
The geographical imagination blew up those water passages to marine proportions.
Not everybody
shared this view. The “father of history” found the tripartite division artificial,
ridiculing the superficial titles attached to the inhabited areas. He argued
that the given names were designated to honor some down-to-earth women, hopefully
of noble origin, rather than glorify heroic men. The Greek historian denounced
the continental construct with its arbitrary boundaries: “I cannot conceive why
three names, and women’s names especially, should ever have been given to a
tract which is in reality one.” (4)
Nevertheless, the image of
the three parts held currency among European scholars. Already for Orosius, an outstanding Christian
historian who lived at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, this outlook
was time-honored and respectable: “Our ancestors fixed a threefold division of
the whole world surrounded by a periphery of the Ocean”. (5) A devout author pays
tribute to both classical authors and the fathers of the Church as his recognized
elders.
