Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Start |||
The
Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness ||| EU News
Blog ||| Special Homages: Meister Eckhart / David Copperfield |
|
From Hutton Webster's, Early European History (1917); edited for this on-line publication, by ELLOPOS
XXIII. GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY AND COLONIZATION
» Contents of this Chapter
Page 12
TO THE INDIES WESTWARD: COLUMBUS AND MAGELLAN
THE GLOBULAR THEORY
Six years before Vasco da Gama cast anchor in the harbor of Calicut, another intrepid sailor, seeking the Indies by a western route, accidentally discovered America. It does not detract from the glory of Columbus to show that the way for his discovery had been long in preparation. In the first place, the theory that the earth was round had been familiar to the Greeks and Romans, and to some learned men even in the darkest period of the Middle Ages. By the opening of the thirteenth century it must have been commonly known, for Roger Bacon refers to it, and Dante, in the Divine Comedy, plans his Inferno on the supposition of a spherical world. The awakening of interest in Greek science, as a result of the Renaissance, naturally called renewed attention to the statements by ancient geographers. Eratosthenes, for instance, had clearly recognized the possibility of reaching India by sailing westward on the same parallel of latitude. Especially after the revival of Ptolemy's [18] works in the fifteenth century, scholars accepted the globular theory; and they even went so far as to calculate the circumference of the earth.
[18] A Latin translation of Ptolemy's Geography, accompanied by maps, was printed for the first time probably in 1462 A.D.
MYTH OF ATLANTIS
In the second place, men had long believed that west of Europe, beyond the strait of Gibraltar, lay mysterious lands. This notion first appears in the writings of the Greek philosopher, Plato, who repeats an old tradition concerning Atlantis. According to Plato, Atlantis had been an island continental in size, but more than nine thousand years before his time it had sunk beneath the sea. Medieval writers accepted this account as true and found support for it in traditions of other western islands, such as the Isles of the Blest, where Greek heroes went after death, and the Welsh Avalon, whither King Arthur, after his last battle, was borne to heal his wounds. A widespread legend of the Middle Ages also described the visit made by St. Brandan, an Irish monk, to the "promised land of the Saints," an earthly paradise far out in the Atlantic. St. Brandan's Island was marked on early maps, and voyages in search of it were sometimes undertaken.
THE MAKING OF EUROPE / EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY: Table of Contents
url: www.ellopos.net/politics/european-history/default.asp
Cf. The Ancient Greece * The Ancient Rome
Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) * Western Medieval Europe * Renaissance in Italy
