Századok – 2010
TANULMÁNYOK - Csukovits Enikő: A földrajzi megismerés űtjai Európában (az ókortól a nagy földrajzi felfedezések megindulásáig)
298 CSUKOVITS ENIKŐ tóf könyvtárából sem: az Imago Mundi, Mandeville és Marco Polo útleírása mellett Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini geográfiája is hozzájárult ahhoz, hogy legnevesebb olvasójuk a Santa Maria fedélzetén elindult világtörténelmi jelentőségű útjára.226 A Cosmographia magában foglalta mindazt, amit a művelt európai a 15. század második felében az ismert világról tudott. Az ismeretlen világ megismerése csak ezután kezdődött. THE WAYS OF GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE IN EUROPE (From Ancient Times until the Great Discoveries) by Enikő Csukovits (Summary) Some of the geographical works written in ancient times have influenced our common knowledge ever since. The Greek geographer, Strabo, wrote his Geógraphika in th first century BC. The first Latin geographical treatise, the De chmnographia of Pomponius Melo, as well as the História naturalis of Pliny the elder, were composed in the 1st centuiy, followed in the 2nd by the Geógraphia of Ptolemy, and in the 3rd by the Collectanea rerum memorabilium of Solinus, which commented upon and completed the work of Pliny. The dissolution of the Roman Empire transformed the possibilities and traditions of travelling, yet the knowledge transmitted by the Greek and Roman authors survived by several centuries the historical changes. Medieval authors, who wanted to describe a country or nation, continued to turn to the classics for models. Beda Venerabilis, for instance, who wrote Iiis História ecclesiastica gentis Aixglorum in the early 8th centuiy, used the same sources as did seven centuries later, in 1410 the Paris theologian, Pierre d'Ailly in Iiis Imago Mundi.. With the triumph of Christianity, pilgrimage, that is, the visit to the shrine or a famous relic of a saint, became the most widespread form of travelling. The new form, moreover, led to the emergence of new genres of geographical literature, namely the different forms of itineraries. The first report of pilgrimage, written by a person from Bordeaux who visited Jerusalem in 333, dates from the 4th century. The author of the Bordeaux itinerary was followed by a good number of western pilgrims who described their journeys in some form. Most of the late medieval pilgrims headed for one of the great European centres of pilgrimage, before all Rome, Compostela or Aachen, or one of the nearby shrines; yet most of the written reports continued to deal with the more dangerous journeys overseas, normally to the Holy Land. A new, much more widespread change in the forms of medieval travels, and in the conceptions and knowledge that medieval people framed about the world was caused by the crusades. The world beyond Europe, of which only some hundred, or at best some thousand pilgrims had had the occasion to gain direct experience, opened up suddenly; the tens of thousands of people who crowded to the Holy Land gained information hitherto unavailable, and these were frequently put to writing. Several historical works were composed about the events of the crusades. The growth is well indicated by the fact that the birth of French vernacular historiography was not so much linked to the histoiy of France itself as to that of the French participants in the crusades. Yet the desire to get acquainted with the world did not halt at eastern the frontiers of the crusader states: in the course of the 13th century Dominican and Franciscan missionaries, and in their wake merchants reached the hitherto unknown regions of Asia; place of pride belongs in this respect to the Dominican expeditions financed by duke Béla, later king Béla IV of Hungaiy. Friar Otto left together with his three companions in 1232 with the aim of finding the eastern Hungarians, and after their return they were followed by Julianus and his fellows. The most successful envoy of pope Innocent IV Piano Carpini, departed in 1245, and was followed some years later by the Franciscan Rubruk Willelmus, a member of the entourage of king Louis DC of France. The last in the series of famous travellers to the East was of course the famous Venetian merchant, Marco Polo, whose memoirs were Scliedel: Weltchronik. Kolorierte Gesamtausgabe von 1493. Einleitung und Kommentar von Stephan Füssel. Köln 2004. 226 Delumeau, J.: A paradicsom i. m. 70., 72.; Broc, N.: La géographie de la renaissance i. m. 18.
