Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. | Page 4

its greatest successes. That is, as explained in Chapter I., it has been attempted to treat Exploration as one continuous thread in the story of Christian Europe from the time of the conversion of the Empire; and to treat the life of Prince Henry as the turning-point, the central epoch in a development of many centuries: this life, accordingly, has been linked as closely as possible with what went before and prepared for it; one third of the text, at least, has been occupied with the history of the preparation of the earlier time, and the difference between our account of the eleventh-and fifteenth-century Discovery, for instance, will be found to be chiefly one of less and greater detail. This difference depends, of course, on the prominence in the later time of a figure of extraordinary interest and force, who is the true hero in the drama of the Geographical Conquest of the Outer World that starts from Western Christendom. The interest that centres round Henry is somewhat clouded by the dearth of complete knowledge of his life; but enough remains to make something of the picture of a hero, both of science and of action.
Our subject, then, has been strictly historical, but a history in which a certain life, a certain biographical centre, becomes more and more important, till from its completed achievement we get our best outlook upon the past progress of a thousand years, on this side, and upon the future progress of those generations which realised the next great victories of geographical advance.
The series of maps which illustrate this account, give the same continuous view of the geographical development of Europe and Christendom down to the end of Prince Henry's age. These are, it is believed, the first English reproductions in any accessible form of several of the great charts of the Middle Ages, and taken together they will give, it is hoped, the best view of Western or Christian map-making before the time of Columbus that is to be found in any English book, outside the great historical atlases.
In the same way the text of this volume, especially in the earlier chapters, tries to supply a want--which is believed to exist--of a connected account from the originals known to us, of the expansion of Europe through geographical enterprise, from the conversion of the Empire to the period of those discoveries which mark most clearly the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World.
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The chief authorities have been:
For the Introductory chapter: (1) Reinaud's account of the Arabic geographers and their theories in connection with the Greek, in his edition of Abulfeda, Paris, 1848; (2) Sprenger's Massoudy, 1841; (3) Edrisi, translated by Am��d��e Jaubert; (4) Ibn-Batuta (abridgment), translated by S. Lee, London, 1829; (5) Abulfeda, edited and translated by Reinaud; (6) Abyrouny's India, specially chapters i., 10-14; xvii., 18-31; (7) texts of Strabo and Ptolemy; (8) Wapp?us' Heinrich der Seefahrer, part 1.
I. For Chapter I. (Early Christian Pilgrims): (1) Itinera et Descriptiones Terr? Sanct?, vols. i. and ii., published by the Soci��t�� de l'Orient, Latin, Geneva, 1877 and 1885, which give the original texts of nearly all the Palestine Pilgrims' memoirs to the death of Bernard the Wise; (2) the Publications of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society; (3) Thomas Wright's Early Travels in Palestine (Bohn); (4) Avezac's Recueil pour Servir �� l'histoire de la g��ographie; (5) some recent German studies on the early pilgrim records, e.g., Gildemeister on Antoninus of Placentia.
II. For Chapter II. (The Vikings): (1) Snorro Sturleson's Heimskringla or Sagas of the Norse Kings; (2) Dozy's essays; (3) the, possibly spurious, Voyages of the Zeni, with the Journey of Ivan Bardsen, in the Hakluyt Society's Publications.
III. For Chapter III. (The Crusades and Land Travel): (1) Publication of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society; (2) Avezac's edition of the originals in his Recueil pour Sevir �� l'histoire de la g��ographie; (3) Yule's Cathay and the Way Thither; (4) Yule's Marco Polo; (5) Benjamin of Tudela and others in Wright's Early Travels in Palestine; (6) Yule's Friar Jordanus; (7) Sir John Mandeville's Travels.
IV. For Chapter IV. (Maritime Exploration): (1) The Marino Sanuto Map of 1306; (2) the Laurentian Portolano of 1351; (3) The Catalan Map of 1375-6; (4) scattered notices collected in early chapters of R.H. Major's Prince Henry the Navigator; (5) B��thencourt's Conquest of the Canaries (Hakluyt Society, ed., Major); (6) Wapp?us' Heinrich der Seefahrer, part 2.
V. For Chapter V. (Geographical Science): (1) Neckam's De Naturis Rerum; (2) the seven chief Mappe-Mondes of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; (3) the leading Portolani; (4) scattered notices, e.g., from Guyot de Provins' "Bible," Brunetto Latini, Beccadelli of Palermo, collected in early chapters of Major's Henry the Navigator; (5) Wauwerman's Henri le Navigateur.
VI. For Chapter VI. (Portugal to 1400): (1) The Chronicle of Don