Identifier: sciliteratur00jaco (find matches)
Title: Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Jacob, P. L., 1806-1884
Subjects: Middle Ages Renaissance Science, Medieval Literature, Medieval
Publisher: London : Bickers and Son
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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us, wroteof countries and places which they had seen. It was in this way thatMarbodius, Bishop of Rennes, who died in 1123, sketched in his didacticpoetry the geography of Brittany, giving it a picturesque character quitein harmony with nature. There were, however, some few men of genius to whom the general studyof science had, even at that period, opened the arcana of astronomical andphilosophical geography. Such was the master of Roger Bacon, that man oflearning 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. RogerBacon always speaks of him as Mader 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 GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. the power to impart to him. He had constrvicted a sphere which imitatedthe motion of the hea\-ens, and it was through tlie intermediary of astronomy
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and niathcmalicH (liat ho grapjilnl with llic iriosl aiduoiis (;ucsli()iis nfg(Orrra))liy. Itcigcr liacoii, in llir Comllj ;);ii( ^^i his ■Opus .M.ijiis, (levelled GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE. almost entirely to the description of tke eartli, doubtless transcribed witboutchange the lessons which he had received from Master Peter; but he notesthe errors of the ancient geographers, refutes the opinions of Pliny and ^Ptolemy, and brings forward a host of fresh problems which science did notsolve till long after his time. Not only did he describe very accuratelyreo-ions not vet known and scarcely hinted at, but he further maintainedthat Africa extended very far south, that it had inhabitants the other side ofthe equator, that the temperature of the pole was endurable, that the IndianOcean washed the southern coasts of the Asiatic continent, and that the earthwas ten times more thickly peopled than was believed to be the case. At the time Bacon committed to paper, under Master Peters dictation,

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