A Distant Mirror_ The Calamitous 14th Century - Barbara W. Tuchman [42]
Given the hardships and the length of time consumed, people journeyed over long distances to an astonishing degree—from Paris to Florence, from Flanders to Hungary, London to Prague, Bohemia to Castile, crossing seas, alps, and rivers, walking to China like Marco Polo or three times to Jerusalem like the Wife of Bath.
What was the mental furniture of Enguerrand’s class, the upper level of lay society? Long before Columbus, they knew the world was a globe, a knowledge proceeding from familiarity with the movement of the stars, which could be made comprehensible only in terms of a spherical earth. In a vivid image, it was said by the cleric Gautier de Metz in his Image du Monde, the most widely read encyclopedia of the time, that a man could go around the world as a fly makes the tour of an apple. So far was the earth from the stars, according to him, that if a stone were dropped from there it would take more than 100 years to reach our globe, while a man traveling 25 leagues a day without stopping would take 7,157½ years to reach the stars.
Visually, people pictured the universe held in God’s arms with man at its center. It was understood that the moon was the nearest planet, with no light of its own; that an eclipse was the passage of the moon between the earth and the sun; that rain was moisture drawn by the sun from the earth which condensed into clouds and fell back as rain; that the shorter the time between thunder and lightning, the nearer the source.
Faraway lands, however—India, Persia, and beyond—were seen through a gauze of fabulous fairy tales revealing an occasional nugget of reality: forests so high they touch the clouds, horned pygmies who move in herds and grow old in seven years, brahmins who kill themselves on funeral pyres, men with dogs’ heads and six toes, “cyclopeans” with only one eye and one foot who move as fast as the wind, the “monoceros” which can be caught only when it sleeps in the lap of a virgin, Amazons whose tears are of silver, panthers who practice the caesarean operation with their own claws, trees whose leaves supply wool, snakes 300 feet long, snakes with precious stones for eyes, snakes who so love music that for prudence they stop up one ear with their tail.
The Garden of Eden too had an earthly existence which often appeared on maps, located far to the east, where it was believed cut off from the rest of the world by a great mountain or ocean barrier or fiery wall. In the earthly Paradise grow every kind of tree and flowers of surpassing colors and a thousand scents which never fade and have healing qualities. Birds’ songs harmonize with the rustling of forest leaves and the rippling of streams flowing over jeweled rocks or over sands brighter than silver. A palace with columns of crystal and jasper sheds marvelous light. No wind or rain, heat or cold mars Paradise; no sickness, decay, death, or sorrow enters there. The mountain peak on which it is situated is so high it touches the sphere of the moon—but here the scientific mind intervened: that would be impossible, pronounced the 14th century author of Polychronicon, because it would cause an eclipse.
For all the explanations, the earth and its phenomena were full of mysteries: What happens to fire when it goes out? Why are there different colors of skin among men? Why do the sun’s rays darken a man’s skin but bleach white linen? How can the earth, which is weighty, be suspended in air? How do souls make their way to the next world? Where lies the soul? What causes madness? Medieval people felt surrounded by puzzles, yet because God was there they were willing to acknowledge that causes are hidden, that man cannot know why all things are as they are; “they are as God pleases.”
That did not silence the one unending